The Power of Gratitude: It's About What
You Have, Not What You're Going to Get
With the hustle and bustle of everyday
life, it's easy to forget about what and
who you're grateful for.
February 26, 2013
American Electric Power
(NYSE: AEP) will stop
burning coal at three power
plants in the Midwest and
pay $8.5 million as part of
a revision of a 2007
settlement with the U.S.
Environmental Protection
agency, states and
environmental groups.
During the week ending
February 22, Nigerian oil
minister Diezani
Alison-Madueke lamented that
her country's economic
lifeline, its crude exports,
were coming under increasing
pressure from rising US
domestic production, which
has reduced the need for
imports.
The Senate
Committee on Appropriations
has collected letters from
most federal agencies in
which their respective
directives have summarized
the expected impacts of the
forthcoming budget
sequestration. These include
Agriculture, Commerce,
Office of Management and
Budget, Defense, Justice,
Education, Energy, EPA, FBI,
HHS, Homeland Security, HUD,
Interior Let, Labor, NASA,
NSF, SBA, Social Security,
State, Transportation, and
Treasury.
Call it the million-megawatt question.
Is there a practical, effective way to
store energy on a large enough scale to ease
bottlenecks on the regional electric power
grid? Researchers have pursued multiple
paths looking for an answer.
Is too much sunshine being harvested in
the Golden State?
People who see huge solar projects as
rivals to farming seem to think so, a study
suggests.
Below-average hydro-electric
power generation in the US
Northwest will boost natural
gas demand by up to 250,000
Mcf/d in the region this
year, according to a
Barclays Capital analysis
released Friday.
A city-owned and -operated
electric utility would be
able to offer lower rates
than Xcel Energy, reduce
greenhouse gas emissions by
more than 50 percent from
current levels and obtain 54
percent or more of its
electricity from renewable
resources, Boulder's energy
czar said.
An oil spill into the Gulf
of Mexico was averted by the
quick action of crew
members aboard one of two
inbound chemical tankers
that collided on Wednesday,
approximately 70 miles south
of Galveston, Texas. The
early morning collision
caused some internal damage
to one of the tankers.
Departing Energy Secretary
Steven Chu said Friday that
he expects solar power to
continue dropping in price
and produce power as cheaply
as any other resource within
10 years or sooner. Chu made
the comments as part of a
question and answer session
held on Google+.
On the decline.
In region after region,
utilities are shutting down
coal plants like this one
and instead generating
electricity from natural
gas.
Ted Cruz glanced at his black cowboy
boots, beneath a silver Texas belt buckle,
waiting for the admirers to stop clapping.
His arrival had turned a drop-by at a
Houston lumber yard into a virtual campaign
rally. At an earlier stop near Austin —at a
gun manufacturer that churns out AR-15
rifles — cheering fans crowded next to
employees, and one held a sign reading "Ted
Cruz rocks!"
The new troublemaker of the U.S. Senate
was home again, and savoring nothing short
of a victory lap.
Biodiesel producer sources
applauded the US
Environmental Protection
Agency Monday after the EPA
finalized its rule to
approve camelina oil as a
low-carbon feedstock under
the Renewable Fuel Standard.
...no party or likely
coalition appeared likely to
be able to form a majority
in the upper house or
Senate, creating a
deadlocked parliament - the
opposite of the stable
result that Italy
desperately needs to tackle
a deep recession, rising
unemployment and a massive
public debt.
After living through the "first" energy
crisis in the 1970s, Dave and Susan Chrzan
figured the days of cheap fuel were
numbered.
So the Sarver couple looked for ways to
harness the sun's power to meet their energy
needs.
More than 600,000 fracking
wells and waste injection
sites have popped up across
the country, according to
ProPublica. The oil and gas
industry, along with federal
regulators, would have you
believe that injecting
trillions of gallons of
toxic liquid deep into the
earth is harmless.
A congressional watchdog
agency has put climate
change atop the financial
risks that could imperil the
federal government. It’s the
first time that the General
Accountability Office has
given the phenomenon such
infamy -- but it’s still
unlikely to sway those who
say the issue is not one for
government to solve.
Global warming may have caused extreme
events such as a 2011 drought in the United
States and a 2003 heatwave in Europe by
slowing vast, wave-like weather flows in the
northern hemisphere, scientists said on
Tuesday.
The study of meandering air systems that
encircle the planet adds to understanding of
extremes that have killed thousands of
people and driven up food prices in the past
decade.
Federal budget cuts will probably damage
U.S. states’ economies recovering from the
worst fiscal crisis since the Great
Depression and push the U.S. back into
recession, governors of both parties say.
President Barack Obama and Congress need
to find a way to prevent $85 billion in
across-the-board spending cuts from taking
effect starting on March 1, said Republican
and Democratic governors who are in
Washington this weekend for a meeting of the
National Governors Association.
President Obama will not
stray from his early
promises to build green
energy as the foundation
from which this nation will
grow a 21st Century economy.
He said as much in his State
of the Union address. But
one component of his
strategy was not mentioned
-- using green banks to
finance that expansion.
Ancient records from icy caves in Siberia
show that a small amount of global warming
can thaw vast areas of frozen ground and
release harmful stores of greenhouse gases,
a study showed.
Any melt of permafrost, or permanently
frozen soil that covers almost a quarter of
the northern hemisphere from Alaska to
China, can also destabilize everything from
oil and gas pipelines to buildings and
roads.
Homes available for
sale as well as the housing
supplies measured in months
are now at pre-recession
levels, while household
formation continues to
recover. This development
was predicted by William
Wheaton back in 2009.
The Federal Reserve’s
massive easing program is
creating bubbles in the
stock and housing markets,
says economist, investment
banker and "Currency Wars"
author James Rickards.
“Equity prices are
higher, housing prices are
higher, but they’re higher
for the wrong reason,”
Rickards tells Newsmax TV in
an exclusive interview.
“They’re higher because of
money printing. In other
words, these are new asset
bubbles forming.”
The Department of
Interior recently completed
the final tribal
consultations for the
implementation of the Cobell
Settlement's Land Buy Back
Program for Tribal
Nations....The land
consolidation program will
provide individual American
Indians with an opportunity
to obtain cash payments for
divided land interests and
free up the land for the
benefit of tribal
communities.
When a handful of companies
looked to set up a wind farm
in southern Marshall county
in 2007, Jeff Heil and his
neighbors did something that
hadn't been done before:
they drew up a contract with
over 60 landowners in
agreement to participate in
a wind farm that would
benefit everyone, regardless
of turbine location.
Centuries ago, most Europeans (and their
descendants on our side of the pond)
produced food on their land. Whether in the
form of kitchen gardens, farm fields, or
pastures for raising livestock, most folks
relied on their land in order to eat.
Only the rich could afford to flaunt
their wealth by devoting large areas of land
to an inedible, yet beautifully manicured,
green lawn.
The Obama administration’s
efforts to reduce mercury
pollution from coal plants
has become one of its most
contentious undertakings.
But Minnesota’s regulatory
officials are saying that
they may have found the key
-- one that has built
consensus and that could
become a national model.
The manufacturer of flawed
equipment that has kept the
San Onofre nuclear plant
offline for more than a year
paid $45.4 million to the
plant operator, Southern
California Edison, as part
of a warranty for the
equipment.
Not only did the tribe order the cups for
its Angel of the Winds Casino, it ended up
investing $5 million into the company.
"It was kind of meant to be," Andrews
said. "They fall in line with what we value
in regards to doing what we can for this
planet while we're here. And that's really
important to Indian tribes — protecting
Mother Earth."
Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s
bid to prevent New Yorkers
from drinking large sodas is
far more sweeping than
previously thought, the new
regulations show.
Analysis from EIA's most
recent Residential Energy
Consumption Survey (RECS)
shows that U.S. homes built
in 2000 and later consume
only 2% more energy on
average than homes built
prior to 2000, despite being
on average 30% larger.
Many inventors have
questioned the logic of
harnessing wind power by
situating heavy gearboxes,
generators, and rotor blades
hundreds of feet in the air,
as is the case for
conventional horizontal wind
turbines. One alternative
design that does away with
all these entities looks as
though it is getting
traction from both investors
and a few potential
customers.
Two of President Barack
Obama’s top political
strategists are behind the
launch of a new liberal
activist organization that
will be funded by seemingly
unlimited donations of
$50,000 or more from
“Hollywood studio
executives, California
energy investors and Chicago
business titans,”...
Christensen says an
unspecified number of
immigrants have been
released and placed on more
cost effective forms of
supervision.
The never-ending Obama
campaign announced this week
that it was raising funds
from big donors -- only a
relative handful -- to put
together a $50 million fund
for an army of grass-roots
activists in swing states to
go after Republican
Congressmen and Senators who
dare to vote against the
president's wishes.
NYMEX April crude settled 29
cents higher at
$93.13/barrel Friday after a
largely rangebound trading
session, bouncing back
slightly after a two-day
selloff.
Maryland- The measure,
House Bill 226, requires a
certain percentage of
electricity sold in Maryland
to eventually come from wind
farms off the coast of Ocean
City. And it sets up a
process for utility
customers to support the
wind industry after the
turbines are built, which
could cost $1.50 per month
for the average residential
customer and 1.5 percent
more per month for
commercial customers.
Meanwhile, both Citi and
accountants
PriceWaterhouseCooper say
the OPEC oil cartel has much
to lose if largescale shale
development spreads beyond
the US, not just in terms of
oil prices but also in terms
of geopolitical influence.
China has a growing problem.
It wants cleaner air; it
needs to upgrade the quality
of its fuels to get that;
but it traditionally has
regulated retail prices to
ensure they don’t get to
levels that might cause
unrest. In this week’s
Oilgram News column
Petrodollars, Yen Ling Song
discusses the conundrum.
When McMaster University in
Hamilton, Ontario built
their new Engineering
Technology Building, they
used the latest
state-of-the-art technology
not only to achieve LEED
Gold certification, but also
to create a living
laboratory to train s
tudents on the building
systems of the future. One
of the components is a
rainwater harvesting system
that collects, filters and
disinfects rainwater for
non-potable and potable use
in the building.
There are currently 5
numbered sunspot regions on
the disk. slight chance for
an M-class flare on days
one, two, and three (26 Feb,
27 Feb, 28 Feb). he
geomagnetic field is
expected to be at quiet
levels on days one, two, and
three (26 Feb, 27 Feb, 28
Feb).
A neighboring 1,600-megawatt coal plant
has Lively Grove resident Tom Sabo worried
the future is bleak in "God's country."
"Nothing lasts forever," said the
72-year-old retired grain farmer. "When the
power plant has used its potential, what is
going to happen 100, 200 years from now?"
At issue is the renewal of the plant's
water permit and the construction of a
700-acre coal ash pile directly west of the
plant.
Some states claiming to be
strongly protective of gun
rights are trying to lure
firearms and ammunition
manufacturers away from
states with tougher guns
laws, many of them passed in
the wake of the Newtown,
Conn. school shootings.
Anonymous billionaires
donated $120m to more than
100 anti-climate groups
working to discredit climate
change science
Watch out for the massive
con that may soon corrupt
this beneficial fish into an
unmitigated health disaster.
If you eat this fish, you
could have two hazards to
sidestep - or possibly
succumb to its serious
effects. Could this become
one of the most dangerous
fish to eat?
Six single-shell containment tanks are
leaking highly radioactive waste at the
Hanford Nuclear Site in south-central
Washington state, Energy Department
officials have discovered.
Two-thirds of the nation’s high-level
radioactive waste is stored at Hanford, a
586 square-mile site located on the Columbia
River. Hanford is the most contaminated
nuclear site in the United States and is the
focus of the nation’s largest environmental
cleanup.
Heavy snowfall and rain covered nearly
all of the drought-stricken U.S. Plains hard
red winter wheat region late this week,
providing some relief from the worst drought
in over a half century, an agricultural
meteorologist said on Friday.
"It's going to help but it's not a fix,
more is needed to bring the area out of
drought," said Andy Karst, meteorologist for
World Weather Inc.
SOLON Corporation, one of
the largest providers of
turnkey solar power plants
in the United States, today
announced the completion of
the 5 megawatt (MW) Prairie
Fire Solar Plant in Tucson,
Arizona, for Tucson Electric
Power (TEP).
Today, the Renewable Fuels
Association (RFA) released a
state-by-state update to the
“Contribution of the Ethanol
Industry to the Economy of
the United States,” an
economic impact analysis
performed by Cardno ENTRIX.
The original report,
released earlier this month
at RFA’s National Ethanol
Conference, found that the
industry has supported over
383,000 direct and indirect
and induced jobs across all
sectors of the economy last
year. The industry
contributed $43.3 billion to
GDP and $30.2 billion in
household income.
President Obama and his
media allies are pushing the
notion that sequester will
destroy Western
Civilization. States are
saying that the cuts will
devastate the economy; the
Pentagon insists they will
"hollow out" the military.
Eight hundred thousand
civilian DOD employees will
have to take a 20% pay cut.
Head start is at risk. All
manner of chaos will descend
if we trim the Discretionary
Budget from 1,034 billion to
950 billion!
The thought is based on the belief gusts
and breezes aren't likely to "run out" on a
global scale in the way oil wells might run
dry, he said in a Harvard release Monday.
But an atmospheric modeling study,
published in the journal Environmental
Research Letters, suggests a law of
diminishing returns when it comes to the
largest of wind farms.
The country's foreign
minister offers to start
negotiations but rebels say
talks cannot begin until the
president resigns.
With wide-ranging support
from sportsmen to local
governments, Senators Jon
Tester (D-Mont.) and Dean
Heller (R-Nev.) are
introducing a bipartisan
bill that streamlines
permitting for renewable
energy projects on public
lands.
Unnecessary
drilling and filling your
teeth with toxic materials
can have far-reaching,
long-term health
ramifications. Newer
alternative types of
dentistry, such as minimally
invasive dentistry and
biomimetic dentistry offer
dramatically safer and more
effective solutions
...what will an exit from
such extraordinary
expansionary policy actually
look like? Much of course
will depend on the
trajectory of the US economy
in the next couple of years,
but there are two key
possibilities. One is that
the Fed will simply end
purchases and let the
securities naturally pay
down (due to prepayments on
MBS) and mature. However,
given the rate at which
excess reserves are now
being created through asset
purchases, it may take too
long to "drain" these
balances (excess reserves
represent the largest
component of the monetary
base now).
Spain: As Economy Weakens,
Government Budget Off Course
How Hundreds of New
Centrifuges Will Help Iran
Make More Nukes, Faster
Oil and Influence at Stake,
Russia Spends Big on
Post-Chávez Bet
Europe Will Be the Biggest
Loser in Caspian Sea Oil
Fight
Israel: Dead Australian
Prisoner Linked To Mossad
Operations Against Iran
UK Trade Trip to India Marks
a Reversal of Roles
China’s Stranglehold on
'Rare Earths' Will Loosen
No End in Sight for
Sudan-South Sudan Conflict
Excerpt: Massacre's
sole survivor finally gets
his day in print.
Hoomothya was a
Yavapai Indian who as a boy
witnessed the massacre of
225 fellow tribal members at
the hands of American
soldiers in what has come to
be known as the Battle of
the Caves. Taken in by
Captain James Burns, the boy
Hoomothya, or Wet Nose,
spent his childhood
crisscrossing Turtle Island
with the soldiers...
Following the introduction
of tax changes to encourage
UK offshore oil and gas
production, the industry has
responded with the highest
investment in more than 30
years, the offshore
operators group Oil & Gas UK
said in its 2013 Activity
Survey published Monday.
"The Senate Judiciary Committee could begin
considering gun control bills as soon as
Thursday, including a measure that would ban
military-style assault weapons. Other pieces
of legislation that will be considered by
the panel are measures stopping illegal
trafficking of guns, bolstering background
checks on gun sales, and improving security
in schools."
Requires "haz-mat" to clean
up... so what's with this
doctor-led movement to force
this potentially deadly,
maiming toxin on you?
They've been caught
red-handed (but don't expect
reform). Find out how you've
been betrayed while you
still have time to avoid
it...
This season's flu shot seemed to do
little to protect people over 65 from
the worst and most dominant flu strain
spreading around, a small government
study found. Vaccinated people in that
age group had only a 9 percent lower
chance of going to the doctor with flu
symptoms from the main virus than people
who didn't get the shot.
The vaccine was much better at
protecting younger people.
The Obama administration
wants courts to force
companies protesting the
contraceptive requirement
included in Obamacare to
provide the service before
the legal fight is resolved.
Almost 50 lawsuits have
already been filed by
religious organizations and
private businesses against
the healthcare act's
requirement that
contraceptive coverage be
provided to their employees,
reports Politico. More than
half of them were filed by
church-affiliated
organizations.
The average U.S. retail
price for regular motor
gasoline is up about 45
cents per gallon since the
start of 2013, reaching
$3.75 per gallon on February
18. The rise in gasoline
prices is partly due to
higher crude oil prices.
However, most of the
increase in the pump price
of gasoline reflects an
increase in the gasoline
crack spread, the difference
between the wholesale price
of gasoline and the price of
crude oil.
February 22, 2013
Five of the biggest U.S. banks have cut
struggling homeowners' mortgage balances by
$19 billion, part of a total $45.8 billion
in relief provided under a landmark
settlement over foreclosure abuses.
More than 550,000 borrowers received some
form of mortgage relief between March 1 and
Dec. 31, 2012, according to a report issued
Thursday by Joseph Smith, the monitor of the
settlement.
A pair of state lawmakers said Wednesday,
Feb. 20, that they will introduce a bill to
require the state's utilities to produce 10
percent of their electricity from solar
energy by 2030.
Backers of the solar mandate said it
could raise utility rates by 1 percent.
China aims to spend $850 billion to
improve filthy water supplies over the next
decade, but even such huge outlays may do
little to reverse damage caused by decades
of pollution and overuse in Beijing's push
for rapid economic growth.
China is promising to invest 4 trillion
yuan ($650 billion) - equal to its entire
stimulus package during the global financial
crisis - on rural water projects alone
during the 2011-2020 period.
The new, fast-growing
industry of deregulated
electricity in New Hampshire
may have hit a bump: One of
the first companies to offer
lower rates in New
Hampshire, Resident Power,
allegedly has been suspended
by New England's power grid.
About a year ago, at the Platts North
American Crude Oil Marketing Conference,
University of Houston professor Dr. Craig
Pirrong made an eye-opening observation.
His math went sort of like this: take the
narrowing of the Brent-WTI spread along the
curve out to the latter part of this decade;
count the number of barrels in the projects
that were planned at that time to get oil
away from the Cushing bottleneck (at that
time just the Seaway reversal and the
Keystone XL full line); assume a
transportation cost; and you could figure
out what the value was per day of the
infrastructure that was being planned.
At that point, it was a whopping $10
million per day.
With March 1st
approaching, the realization
that sequestration may
actually hit is setting in.
Washington is nowhere close
to a solution and the blame
games are running rampant.
The White House is now
playing a "game of chicken"
to see if the Republicans
blink.
New York City Mayor Michael
Bloomberg has called for a
ban on polystyrene foam and
announced the start of a
food waste collection pilot
program.
Most Americans are hearing
for the first time about the
sequester: federal spending
cuts due to take place a
week from now.
While
President Barack Obama stood
Tuesday with first
responders who may lose
their jobs because of the
policy, most Americans don’t
realize that the policy is
the result of the
president’s own faulty
leadership, House Speaker
John Boehner writes in The
Wall Street Journal.
There can be little doubt, the sleeping
dragon has awakened. And, it's bearing its
fangs and breathing fire in America's face.
China can no longer disguise its desire to
become the world's dominant economic and
military power
The controversial Keystone
XL Pipeline, if approved,
will be “built through
sacred sites, traditional
camp grounds and areas full
of Native history,” warned a
young Native woman whose
organization, Idle No More,
was one of 30 Colorado
groups rallying in Denver
February 17 as thousands of
activists gathered in the
nation’s capital and
elsewhere.
Comcast, the nation's
largest cable provider, no
longer accepts
advertisements from
businesses selling guns.
The policy change was
quietly instituted on Feb. 8
after Comcast acquired a
controlling interest in NBC
Universal, which already had
a policy of not accepting
ads relating to firearms.
Have the government and
General Electric lied to us?
Action Alert!
The Energy
Independence and Security
Act of 2007 (EISA) mandates
the phase-out of
incandescent light bulbs,
and favors energy-efficient
compact fluorescent light
(CFL) bulbs.
Sounds
good—until you realize that
CFL bulbs contain mercury,
and mercury poses a
significant cancer risk.
Retailers who employ
low-wage workers are
considering cutting back
their hours or paying fines
rather than provide
insurance through the rules
set up by Obamacare.
The US may be home
to mammoth technology brands like Apple,
Amazon, Intel, and Google, but when it comes
to adopting new media technology, it's
running behind other countries.
In fact, the US doesn't even make the top
10 countries in ZenithOptimedia's recently
released New Media Forecasts study of 19
advanced markets and new media technology
adoption. It currently lags Western Europe,
Canada, Australia, and South Korea, and will
stay behind for at least the next few years,
noted several media reports, including this
one.
Wheat and corn farmers are
banking on more rain and
snow in late February so
they can keep nursing
depleted soil back to
healthier levels of moisture
amid the worst drought in
the United States grain belt
in more than 50 years.
The European Space Agency
(ESA) is assessing
information about the
Chelyabinsk meteor that
exploded last week over
Russia in the hope of
improving the space agency’s
asteroid-hunting program.
Estonia has become the first country in
the world to install a nationwide system of
fast chargers for electrical vehicles, the
manager of the new system said, as part of
European efforts to reduce carbon emissions.
The 165 chargers were produced and
installed by engineering group ABB, and
construction was financed from the
government's sale of 10 million surplus CO2
emission permits to Japan's Mitsubishi
Corporation.
Wind power in Central and
Eastern Europe will become a
significant source of
electricity production by
2020 and Turkey’s wind power
generation capacity will
grow even faster, provided
there is a stable legal
framework in each country,
according to a new report
from the European Wind
Energy Association (EWEA).
Washington’s most powerful
institutions are vulnerable
to Chinese cyberspies, and
many have already been
hacked, security experts are
convinced.
“Law
firms, think tanks,
newspapers — if there’s
something of interest, you
should assume you’ve been
penetrated,” James Lewis, a
cybersecurity expert at the
Center for Strategic and
International Studies, which
has been hacked in the past,
told The Washington Post.
Tax refunds are flowing more
slowly than they were last
year and could be cause for
concern, some experts worry.
Tax refunds are $26
billion behind last year’s
rate, which could crimp
consumer spending in the
first quarter, experts told
CNBC.
Staking out his ground ahead
of a fiscal deadline,
President Barack Obama
lashed out against
Republicans, saying they are
unwilling to raise taxes to
reduce deficits and warning
that the jobs of essential
government workers, from
teachers to emergency
responders, are on the line.
Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell today signed
legislation repealing certain financial
incentives for electric utility companies
that use renewable energy sources.
The change means utilities, such as
Dominion Virginia Power, will no longer be
eligible for a bonus for obtaining a certain
portion of their energy from renewable
sources, such as solar power. Reduced
incentives remain for nuclear and off-shore
wind power.
Chemicals in household and
industrial products that
disrupt the human hormone
system are linked to high
global rates of breast,
ovarian, prostate,
testicular and thyroid
cancers, warns a report
released today by the UN
Environment Programme and
the World Health
Organization.
Here in the United States,
we're spoiled. Food is
cheap. I know it's hard to
believe, given what you've
probably been paying for
groceries lately. But it's
true. Even with rising food
prices, we still pay a
smaller percentage of our
income for food than
residents of just about any
other country in the world.
But the farming system that
helps keep our food costs
down also puts us at great
risk. It's the same farming
system that caused the Irish
Potato Famine. And we all
know what the result of that
was -- 12 percent of the
Irish starved to death.
Millions more suffered the
debilitating long-term
health effects of severe
malnutrition. If an event of
the same magnitude happened
in the United States today,
we'd be talking about over
37 million lives lost.
If President Obama, the Republican House
and Democratic Senate cannot cut $85 billion
from this year's $3.8 trillion budget
without laying off first-responders, tying
up airport security lines and furloughing
food safety inspectors, what good are they?
The answer is: Not much.
The report from the National
Renewable Energy Laboratory
in Colorado says the panels
manufactured by Silicon
Energy in Mountain Iron are
the most reliable when
exposed to high humidity and
temperatures as high as 185
degrees Fahrenheit and as
cold as 40 below zero.
U.S. banks have improved
their finances to the point
that their capital positions
are better than at any time
in more than 40 years,
former FDIC Chairman William
Isaac tells Newsmax TV in an
exclusive interview.
However, he adds that the
Federal Reserve's ultra-low
interest rate policy poses
problems for the industry.
The Guardian had a
good summary yesterday on
the situation in Italy,
where the recession is
showing no signs of abating.
The winner of the upcoming
elections will face some
severe challenges.
Energy Minister Alaa
Batayneh on Wednesday
unveiled plans for the
country's first private
sector renewable energy
projects as part of efforts
to ease the Kingdom's
ongoing energy crunch.
A Hennepin County judge has
ordered an Excelsior company
that's being sued by
Minnesota Attorney General
Lori Swanson to stop selling
any more small wind turbines
to farmers and to produce an
accounting of its earlier
sales within t
Company officials are staying mum, but it
looks as though a pioneering Flagstaff
manufacturer of backyard wind turbines is
closing its doors for good.
Carol Curtis, the director of the
Coconino County Career Center, said
employees were told by Southwest Windpower
officials Wednesday that the facility in
Flagstaff was going to be closed and they
should "leave quickly."
In a year that was marked by
bad news on the
environmental front — the
polar ice caps melting at an
increasing rate, the decline
in biodiversity, the failure
to reach agreement on
climate change, amongst
other things — the release
of data, at the end of 2012,
showing a fall in
deforestation in the Amazon,
one of the most important
biomes in the world, came as
a relief.
With huge swaths of flat
desert surfaces and tons of
sunlight, Mexico is a prime
location for solar power,
even though potential
financial backers are
struggling to adequately
understand the advantages of
solar PV or risk evaluation.
It will be a
make-or-break year for
alternative fuel developers
as leaders race to show real
revenue in order to cement
their place in the industry,
says Lux Research. Laggards
will be caught between a
rock and a hard place as
government support has
become unpredictable and
private investment dollars
are fast drying up.
Germany should tread
carefully in developing
hydraulic fracturing, or
fracking, to tap shale gas
reserves, Chancellor Angela
Merkel said on Wednesday, in
some of her first public
comments on the
controversial drilling
technique.
Al Jazeera, the cable news
network owned by the
government of Qatar, has big
plans for its American
operation despite being
criticized by the U.S.
government for airing videos
from Osama bin Laden.
The U.S. cable news
channel, Al Jazeera America,
will be editorially separate
from the Doha-based
broadcast center that is
also home to Al Jazeera
English.
Puget Sound Energy (PSE),
the Pacific Northwest's
largest utility wind energy
producer, last week set a
new record in the amount of
wind-generated electricity
consumed by customers.
In one day, the 1.1 million
homes and businesses PSE
serves got 23.5 percent of
their electricity from the
utility's three Eastern
Washington wind farms -- a
new production record.
The Southern Environmental
Law Center on Thursday filed
a notice with the
Environmental Protection
Agency and others alleging
that state-owned utility
Santee Cooper is violating
the federal Clean Water Act
by allowing pollution at its
Grainger electric generating
plant here to seep into the
Waccamaw River.
Cosmic rays are subatomic
particles, made up of around
ninety percent protons, that
move through space at close
to the speed of light.
Magnetic fields deflect and
distort the path of the
particles, making it near
impossible to determine
their point of origin.
However, the presence of
cosmic rays can, under
certain circumstances, lead
to the emission of gamma
rays, a form of light that
travels to us directly from
its source.
If Joseph Zawodny, a senior
scientist at NASA’s Langley
Research Center, is correct,
the future of energy may lie
in a nuclear reactor small
enough and safe enough to be
installed where the home
water heater once sat. Using
weak nuclear forces that
turn nickel and hydrogen
into a new source of atomic
energy, the process offers a
light, portable means of
producing tremendous amounts
of energy for the amount of
fuel used. It could
conceivably power homes,
revolutionize transportation
and even clean the
environment.
Is Israel gearing up for a
preemptive strike against
Iran’s nuclear sites? Is a
countdown running towards
war in the epicenter? Would
Israel move against Tehran
even in the face of intense
pressure by the Obama
administration not to take
action? Would Israel move in
the face of potentially
lethal blowback by Iran’s
allies, including Hezbollah,
Hamas, and most worrisome
the Assad regime in
Damascus, which has
stockpiles of chemical and
biological weapons?
Drinking coffee can not only
boost your energy but also
your longevity. That’s the
key finding of a new federal
health study of nearly a
half-million coffee drinkers
that found those who
regularly enjoy a cup of
java live longer than those
who don’t.
When major construction
started at Georgia Power's
Plant Vogtle nuclear
expansion project near
Augusta, Ga., a year ago,
all eyes were on what was
supposed to be the rebirth
of the nuclear industry
after more than a generation
without new plants.
President Obama boasts that
his ObamaCare legislation
will reduce the number of
uninsured by thirty
million. But recent actions
by the states to reject his
proposed expansion of
Medicaid auger about a 25%
reduction in his stated
goal.
The debate over universal background
checks for gun-buyers is about to
get hotter.
More than a dozen lawmakers who oppose
President Barack Obama's plan to expand
background checks to all gun-buyers are to
be targeted in a series of online
advertising as part of a national day of
action Friday.
The White House Wednesday
unveiled details of an
infrastructure spending plan
that includes faster
approvals for certain energy
projects.
The plan,
which calls for spending $50
billion on transportation
infrastructure and new
partnerships between
government and private
companies for infrastructure
projects, includes a plan to
quicken approvals for
pipelines, renewable energy
and other construction
projects.
The recycling rate of
single-serve PET water
bottles jumped 19.7% in just
one year, the International
Bottled Water Association
reported this afternoon.
Americans around the nation
were shocked Friday as they
heard about H.J.Res. 15.
H.J.Res 15 proposes an
amendment to the
Constitution of the United
States to repeal the
Twenty-second Amendment.
This would remove the
limitation on the number of
terms an individual may
serve as President. Rep.
José Serrano (D- NY15)
introduced the controversial
joint resolution on Friday,
the second day of the 2013
legislative session.
The latest Energy
Infrastructure Update
released yesterday by the
Office of Energy Projects at
the Federal Energy
Regulatory Commission
reports that the US had
1,231 megawatts (MW) of new
in-service generating
capacity come online in
January of 2013 — all of it
from renewable sources
including wind, solar and
biomass. The new capacity
for January represents a
three-fold increase from the
431 MW of new renewable
generating capacity that
came online in January of
2012.
In January 2013, a
combination of wind, solar
and biomass provided 1,231
MW of online electrical
generating capacity in the
U.S., according to the
latest Federal Energy
Regulatory Commission (FERC)
Office of Energy Projects
Energy Infrastructure Update
report.
C2 event observed.
There are currently 5
numbered sunspot regions on
the disk. slight chance for
an M-class flare. The
geomagnetic field is
expected to be at quiet to
unsettled levels on days one
and two (22 Feb, 23 Feb) and
quiet levels on day three
(24 Feb). Protons greater
than 10 Mev have a slight
chance of crossing threshold
on days one and two (22 Feb,
23 Feb).
The United States now has
nearly 2.2 million farms
after losing 11,630 farms
last year, according to a
government report released
Tuesday.
The National
Agricultural Statistics
Service's annual snapshot of
farms also pegs the total
land in U.S. farms at 914
million acres. That is 3
million acres fewer acres
than last year. The average
farm size is 421 acres.
United Utilities Plc and
Severn Trent Plc, Britain's
biggest publicly traded
water companies, are
increasingly feeding waste
into tanks of bacteria whose
methane emissions generate
electricity.
Syrian government,
opposition urged to sit down
at negotiating table
Arizona Attorney General Tom
Horne today announced the
introduction of school
safety legislation that
allows a designated school
employee to be trained and
armed for the purpose of
defending a campus.
If your head hurts, rush to
the podiatrist. This is the
logic that animates the
sequester debate.
The
entire debate focuses on the
two areas of discretionary
spending in the budget --
defense and non-defense. But
these are not the problem
areas.
Melting of significant
portions of Arctic
permafrost could accelerate
climate change into a
catastrophe.
The frost crystals at the
entrance to the Ledyanaya
Lenskaya cave in Russia
denote the region's
permafrost, which has been
in place for roughly 400,000
years, according to the
cave's speleothems.
The fact that nuclear power
results in less CO2
emissions than coal and
natural gas is widely
understood; fewer people
know hydropower,
photovoltaic solar power,
and biomass all produce more
CO2 emissions
than nuclear power as well.
The technological revolution
that has seen US crude
production climb to 20-year
highs has ensured the NYMEX
crude contract's position as
the global oil benchmark and
opened the door for the US
to become a key exporter of
refined products, according
to a senior official with
NYMEX parent CME Group.
Silicon Valley start-up
Tesla Motors expects to turn
a profit in the first
quarter for the first time
and said it expects to meet
its target of producing
20,000 electric vehicles
this year.
This is the exclusive,
short story of how Diageo
North America, with
creativity and guts, both in
operations and in the senior
ranks, achieved the holy
grail of carbon emissions
reductions. They did it
without using carbon offsets
— and about 38 years earlier
than they had to.
Italy: Disgraced Silvio
Berlusconi, the Comeback Kid
G20 Won’t Be Able to Stop
Currency War
Malaysian Regime to Face
Voters as Protesters Seethe
China: New Report Confirms
Massive Cyber Attacks
Against US
Indian Submarine Nukes a
Major Concern for China
Iran: Ahmadinejad’s
Influence Slowly Waning
Georgia at Risk of Returning
to Russian Fold
Power Struggle Marked Pope's
Last Days; One Cardinal Is
Front-Runner for Succession
Both sides in the Keystone
XL pipeline battle staked
out their positions years
ago and have largely stuck
to the same arguments for or
against TransCanada’s
project.
As the Arctic ice melts it
will raise the sea level.
But as it does it removes
the enormous weight of the
ice and the land will rise
too in places, Sophisticated
computer modelling has shown
how sea-level rise over the
coming century could affect
some regions far more than
others. The model shows that
parts of the Pacific will
see the highest rates of
rise while some polar
regions will actually
experience falls in relative
sea levels due to the ways
sea, land and ice interact
globally.
Plastic Pollution Coalition
announced that it is
accepting applications for
Think Beyond Plastic, a
contest for entrepreneurs
working on products,
services, materials and
infrastructure solutions
that result in a measurable
reduction in plastic
pollution. Deadline for
submissions is March 10,
2013.
Statistics released this
week by SunRun and the PV
Solar Report show the
growing popularity of
residential solar energy in
general, and third
party-owned solar in
particular.
Electric cars are
taking some time to power
up. But for how long and do
they actually have a
permanent place in the
domestic transport sector?
It’s a wise investment not
just for the American
economy but also for the
global environment, the
White House says...
This week two bills
promoting geothermal energy
development in the U.S. were
reintroduced in the Senate.
Both bills were approved by
the Energy Committee in the
last Congress but never saw
action on the Senate floor.
Researchers at UC Davis have
established, for the first
time, a link between toxic
substances that pollute the
air and what causes them.
-
The “military industrial complex” has
become the military industrial
government. Other industries seem to
have taken over our healthcare, banking,
food and agriculture at the federal
level as well
-
Attacks on your civil liberties will
likely eventually affect your right to
choose what foods you want to buy, the
supplements you want to take, and the
healing modalities you want to pursue to
stay healthy
-
The FTC recently circumvented current
law and made new ones, squashing free
speech in the process, when it ruled
that POM Wonderful had made disease
claims on its product, and that “a
double-blind random-controlled trial
(RCT) is required for any “efficacy”
claim, and two double blind RCTs for any
claim that might seem to be related to a
disease”. Double-blind RCT’s required
for making disease claims is actually an
FDA labeling standard for drugs—not
food. It’s not for the FTC to demand a
product provide such evidence
-
If the FTC prevails in requiring
double-blind RCTs, only pharmaceutical
companies will be able to make health
claims on their patented and
FDA-approved products
-
A new bill called the Free Speech about
Science Act (FSAS) has been introduced,
which would allow natural product
companies to cite peer-reviewed science
in their advertising. Please take action
to support this bill
U.S. commercial crude stocks
continued to accumulate over
the week ended February 15,
data from the Energy
Information Administration
(EIA) showed Thursday,
climbing 4.143 million
barrels to 376.388 million
barrels as both imports and
domestic production ticked
upward while refining
capacity continued to slide
back on seasonal refinery
maintenance.
“The drought is still having
impacts on agriculture
through all the sectors we
think of as important to
food prices,” Volpe said.
While conditions have
improved in some parts of
the U.S., rain is needed in
the coming months to ensure
adequate harvests and
improve inventories, he
said.
According to the US Census Bureau,
about 3.5 million households have been
created over the past couple of years. As a
comparison, only 755K were created in the
previous two years (08-10) - with the
recession hampering household formation.
Booming demand in Vectren Corp.' s
pipeline business
helped carry the company to
better-thanexpected earnings last year. The
Evansville-based energy company released its
fourth-quarter and full-year 2012 earnings
report late Thursday.
A bald eagle fighting for its life after
being found shot at a Rhode Island landfill
now has another hurdle.
A CT scan of the eagle has now discovered
the bird also has a gunshot wound to the
head in addition to previously discovered
pellets in other parts of its body
Iran has begun installing
advanced centrifuges at its
main uranium enrichment
plant, the U.N. nuclear
watchdog said on Thursday, a
defiant step that will worry
Western powers ahead of a
resumption of talks with
Tehran next week.
In the Bloomberg.com
editorial, “Got the Flu? The
Market Can Fix That” (Jan.
22), the writer says that
vaccines are the only game
in town for controlling the
flu and concludes: “Making a
new vaccine typically takes
a decade and can cost $1
billion...
This sounds sensible until
you consider what it
actually means. Do we really
want a world in which the
government envisions a
vaccine, helps develop it,
subsidizes it, then
evaluates its effectiveness
and safety, and finally
mandates it for children?
According to the latest
"Energy Infrastructure
Update" report from the
Federal Energy Regulatory
Commission's Office of
Energy Projects, 1,231 MW of
new in-service electrical
generating capacity came on
line in the United States in
January 2013 -- all from
wind, solar, and biomass
sources.
February 19, 2013
The U.S. exported 55.0
million gallons (mg) of
ethanol in December 2012,
the highest monthly total
since July, according to
newly released government
data. December’s shipments
brought the 2012 annual
total to 738.7 mg, the
second-highest export total
on record. Still, exports in
2012 were down some 38
percent over the
record-setting export
volumes in 2011. Further,
net exports totaled just
183.7 mg, as the U.S.
imported substantial volumes
of sugarcane ethanol from
Brazil in the second half of
2012.
As gasoline prices
rise above $5/gallon in LA
(see video below), analysts
are puzzled. Gasoline prices
have been on the rise for
the past 31 days, which is
highly unusual for this time
of the year. Typically
prices begin rising in March
or April as the driving
season kicks off.
The Obama administration has set a goal
of having 1 million plug-in electric
vehicles on the road by 2015, and the
government offers a $7,500 tax credit to
buyers. But, by and large, Americans still
are rejecting electric cars.
Only 9,819 Nissan Leafs were sold in
2012, and sales of Chevrolet’s Volt, which
has a gas engine that kicks in when the
electric charge runs out, barely topped
23,000. Electric vehicle (EV) sales
accounted for just 0.1 percent of the
market, up only slightly from 0.09 percent
in 2011, according to The Fiscal Times.
Natural gas from a well being drilled by
Apache Corporation in the U.S. Gulf of
Mexico has flowed underground, leading U.S.
regulators to order the company to prepare
to drill a relief well to control the flow
if necessary, the U.S. Bureau of Safety and
Environmental Enforcement said.
Solana is a 280MW (gross)
parabolic trough plant with
six hours of thermal
storage, and is located 70
miles southwest of Phoenix,
near Gila Bend. Once
operational, the power
generated by Solana will be
purchased by Arizona Public
Service (APS), taking
significant steps to meet
the Arizona Corporation
Commissions’ mandate that
utilities provide 15% of
their electricity from
renewable energy sources by
2025.
Traditionally, potential
victims have been told to
flee and hide while waiting
for help. But now law
enforcement instructional
materials say to fight back.
Washington-based Terra Power believes it
has found a way of turning nuclear fuel into
affordable low-carbon electricity.
The company is developing an
innovative technology known as the
travelling wave reactor, or TWR, which runs
on depleted uranium, a byproduct of today’s
water-cooled reactors, according to the FT.
Coal-burning power plants
may get a new life and one
that is tied to the
co-firing of biomass, or
wood chips, that may result
in less pollution. While
some are saying that this is
a harbinger of things to
come, others are cautioning
that such technology is not
only expensive but also a
potential ecological hazard.
-
The biotech industry, led by Monsanto,
is increasing their propaganda efforts
to reshape their public image, and sway
your opinion against the need to label
genetically engineered foods
-
Part of this makeover program appears to
be the recruitment of seemingly
independent “ambassadors” to covertly
lobby the GE agenda. The appearance of
being an independent voice is imperative
for the role to be effective
BP said Tuesday it is ready
to defend itself in court
over civil liability charges
brought against it in the US
over the Macondo oil spill
in the Gulf of Mexico after
attempts to date to settle
out of court failed.
BP late last year agreed
with the US Department of
Justice a $4 billion
settlement over criminal
charges against the company,
which was approved by a US
judge at the end of January.
President Barack Obama's
proposal to fund
clean-energy research with
fees paid by oil and gas
producers is renewing a
debate over whether the
promise of innovation
tomorrow is worth expanding
drilling today.
Your National Renewable
Energy Laboratory showed
just last June how to
produce 80 to 90 percent of
America's electricity from
proven, reliable and
increasingly competitive
renewable sources like the
sun and wind.
The dialog about climate
change, man's role in
causing it, and possible
responses to limit it or
even reverse it, takes on a
crisis tone for many. Is
this the best way to look at
it, and is it the best way
to achieve results? For
some, this sort of dialog
hardens positions and limits
our collective ability to do
anything. Is there an
explanation for why this
seems to be happening?
"The Democratic-controlled
Colorado House of
Representatives on Monday
formally approved a package
of [unconstitutional and
fascistic victim
disarmament] measures, in a
state hit by two of the most
notorious mass shootings in
U.S. history. ... The
Colorado bills, which still
must go before the
Democratic-controlled
Senate, require background
checks for all gun purchases
-- paid for by applicants --
a ban on ammunition
magazines with more than 15
rounds and a measure to
allow colleges in the state
to ban concealed weapons on
campus."
After 16 break-ins, more
than $6,395 worth of stolen
copper and more than $8,560
in damage, police reported
Wednesday said they had
arrested the culprits behind
the crime spree.
Have you read the
devastating Alzheimer's
report published in the
latest issue of Neurology?
The truth is, the number of
people with this
heartbreaking disease is on
track to triple by the year
2050!
-
The Department of Energy (DOE) has
released a proposal that would allow
nearly 14,000 tons of radioactive metals
to be recycled for use in consumer goods
-
The proposal would modify an existing
suspension to allow scrap metals from
radiological areas to be released to
private industry to be used for any
purpose, including recycling
-
The DOE’s proposal would only add to the
growing amount of radioactive scrap
metal already circulating globally,
contributing to increasing “background”
levels of radiation exposure that have
been linked to cancer, cataracts, birth
defects and more
-
New research revealed distinct dietary
patterns among short and long sleepers;
short sleepers tended to eat more
calories and have less food variety than
normal and long sleepers
-
It could be that eating a varied diet is
one key to normal, healthful sleep
-
It’s well known that sleep also impacts
your appetite: when you're sleep
deprived, leptin (the hormone that
signals satiety) falls, while ghrelin
(which signals hunger) rises, leading to
an increase in appetite
-
Emerging research suggests that the
timing of your meals, such as eating
very late at night when you'd normally
be sleeping, or even possibly eating a
very heavy meal in the morning or
mid-day, may throw off your body's
internal clock and lead to weight gain
U.S. farmers will plant crops this spring
under the shadow of a persistent drought
that grips prime farmland from the
Mississippi River to the Rocky Mountains,
with grain supplies already tight from
drought losses in 2012.
In all, 56 percent of the contiguous
United States is under moderate to
exceptional drought, twice the usual amount,
the Senate Agriculture Committee was told on
Thursday.
eBay has an active
government relations team in
Washington DC that lobbies
congress on the company's
behalf. eBay knows the power
of public relations when it
comes to swaying
legislators, and it's now
running a contest to
encourage sellers to share
their stories about their
eBay businesses.
During the presidential
campaign last fall, a single
message was repeated
endlessly in Appalachian
coal country: President
Barack Obama and his
Environmental Protection
Agency, critics said, had
declared a "war on coal"
that was shuttering U.S.
coal-fired power plants and
putting coal miners out of
work. Not so, according to a
detailed analysis of coal
plant finances and economics
presented here yesterday at
the annual meeting of the
American Association for the
Advancement of Science
(which publishes
ScienceNOW). Instead, coal
is losing its battle with
other power sources mostly
on its merits.
Senate Republicans are
crying foul after a wasteto-
energy bill was killed
Wednesday preventing a
helping hand for a start-up
business in La Junta.
The green gas station is
accessible to both private
and business consumers as
more and more companies
switch to renewable fuels.
Seized fraudulent tax
mailings are displayed
during a news conference in
Tampa, Florida, in this
undated police handout
photo. Tax identity theft
skyrocketed to more than 1.2
million cases in 2012 from
only 48,000 in 2008,
according to the U.S.
Treasury Department.
The first group
of protestors at Occupy Wall
Street publically delivered
23 complaints, outlining the
ways in which corporations
control our daily lives.
Number four asserted, “They
have poisoned the food
supply through negligence
and undermined the farming
system through
monopolization.”
Foreign demand for U.S.
Treasury securities rose to
a record level in December,
evidence that overseas
investors remained confident
in U.S. debt despite
on-going budget battles in
Washington.
The
Treasury Department said
Friday that foreign holdings
of U.S. Treasurys rose 0.3
percent in December from
November to $5.56 trillion.
It was the 12th consecutive
monthly gain.
Tens of thousands of people
from across the country
rallied in the nation’s
capital on this chilly day
to demand that President
Barack Obama block
TransCanada’s Keystone XL
tar sands pipeline and move
forward on climate action.
Group of 20 finance chiefs
sharpened their stance
against governments trying
to influence exchange rates
as they sought to tame
speculation of a global
currency war without
singling out Japan for
criticism.
Germany doesn’t get an enormous amount of
sunlight, relatively speaking. Its annual
solar resources are roughly comparable to
Alaska’s. Just about every single region in
the continental United States has greater
solar potential, on average, than Germany.
Yet despite those limitations, Germany
has still managed to be the world leader in
solar power. At the end of 2012, the country
had installed about 30 gigawatts of solar
capacity, providing between 3 percent and 10
percent of its electricity. The United
States, by contrast, has somewhere around
6.4 gigawatts of solar capacity.
At least that's what a newly
granted patent suggests
President Barack Obama was
aware of two IED attacks on
the Benghazi consulate in
Libya in the months leading
up the the Sept. 11 attack
that killed U. S. Ambassador
J. Christopher Stevens and
three others, U.S. Sen.
Lindsey Graham claims.
New research shows that
extracts from unroasted
green coffee beans, taken in
supplement form, can cause
people to lose more than 10
percent of their body weight
— without dieting or added
exercise.
The wind production tax
credit will be the subject
of increased oversight this
Congress, Rep. James
Lankford (R-Okla.) told The
Hill on Tuesday.
Hydropower and geothermal
technologies are some of the
oldest and longest-standing
renewables in use today. In
2011, the total capacity and
use of both technologies
continued to increase. The
two technologies, however,
are at very different stages
of deployment.
Andrew
Jackson: A man
nicknamed “Indian killer”
and “Sharp Knife” surely
deserves the top spot on a
list of worst U.S.
Presidents. Andrew Jackson
“was a forceful proponent of
Indian removal,” according
to PBS. Others have a less
genteel way of describing
the seventh president of the
United States.
“The market is near its
all-time highs because the
central bank is printing
staggering amounts of money.
This is very artificial,’’
Rogers told Steve Malzberg
on Newsmax TV’s “The Steve
Malzberg Show.’’
The plans are part of
Iranian ambitions to exert
its naval power outside the
Persian Gulf, including
sending warships to the
Mediterranean and claiming
it might someday have ships
in the Atlantic.
The Federal Reserve’s
massive easing campaign will
produce a crisis for the
economy, says famed investor
Jim Rogers.
“The
central bank has been
printing staggering amounts
of money, and the government
has been spending a lot of
money because they wanted
Mr. Obama to get
re-elected,” he tells
Newsmax TV in an exclusive
interview. “That's still
spilling over into the
economy.”
"The US department of Energy
in its February 2013 outlook
for coal production in the
Appalachian region forecast
a decline of 5.4 million
tons in 2013, on the heels
of a decline of 33 million
tons in 2012. This forecast
implies that more layoffs
may be in the offing,"
according to Sam Evans,
associate professor of
finance and economics at
King University.
Washington Gov. Jay
Inslee says the state is
willing to resort to the
legal system to push ahead
with cleanup at the Hanford
Nuclear Reservation after
learning that a tank that
holds radioactive liquids is
leaking at the nation's most
contaminated nuclear site.
The Crystal River nuclear
plant was the primary
economic engine in this
rural corner of Florida, a
role that became all the
more important in the wake
of the financial crisis and
collapse of the housing and
construction markets,
according to the report. ..
The decision to close the
plant came after several
years of uncertainty,
following a maintenance
shutdown in 2009 and a
botched upgrade that caused
a crack in the reactor’s
containment building.
A mother of three who buys organic food
and worries about the dangers of "dirty
electricity" has become the face of
resistance in Naperville, Ill.
Led away in handcuffs after trying to
prevent the installation of a "smart meter"
on her home, Jennifer Stahl vows to continue
the protest movement that has made this
suburban community ground zero in a battle
over privacy rights versus modern
technology.
A would-be robber's attempt
to take money from a Myrtle
Beach woman early Friday
morning ended after the
victim pulled a gun on the
suspect.
The same day, a 45-meter in diameter
asteroid known as 2012 14 whizzed harmlessly
past the Earth, its passage overshadowed by
the bright arc drawn across the Russian sky
that same day.
But had it hit ground, 2012 DA14 could
have obliterated a large city.
Sen. Ron Wyden begins his
tenure as chairman of the
Senate Energy and Natural
Resources Committee with a
hearing today on natural
gas, which is cleaner
compared with other fossil
fuels such as oil and coal
and whose supply has
dramatically risen in recent
years largely because of an
extraction technique many
environmentalists oppose.
Two top officials of the
East Orange Water Commission
have been charged with
conspiring to close
contaminated wells before
monthly water tests so as to
falsely report low levels of
a regulated contaminant in
drinking water supplied to
customers, then opening the
wells, allowing the chemical
back into the water supply.
Nigerian President Goodluck
Jonathan has held talks with
world leaders, including UK
Prime Minister David
Cameron, to help stem crude
theft in the Niger Delta,
Nigeria's oil minister
Diezani Alison-Madueke said
Tuesday.
One in five companies with fewer than 500
employees say they are “likely” or “very
likely” to discontinue company-provided
healthcare coverage within five years, a
survey reveals.
The reason: The main provisions of
Obamacare will be implemented in 2014.
The Obama administration’s
Equal Employment Opportunity
Commission says it should be
a federal crime to refuse to
hire ex-convicts — and
threatens to sue businesses
that don’t employ criminals.
The coming revolution, he
said, would have a greater
impact than Internet-based
advances that have changed
how data is exchanged but
did not affect how physical
materials or people are
moved.
Central banks around the
world are easing monetary
policy, which often pushes a
currency lower.
“There is a currency war
going on. The irony of a
currency war, which makes it
different from other wars,
is the object is to kill
itself,” Schiff said at a
conference Monday, CNBC
reports.
“Unfortunately, I think the
U.S. is going to win the
currency war.”
Reuters have been told that
President Barack Obama is
thinking about appointing
MIT nuclear physicist Ernest
Moniz as the new Energy
Secretary once Stephen Chu
steps down.
People say America is
exceptional. I agree, but
it’s not the complexion of
our skin or the twists in
our DNA that make us unique.
America is exceptional
because we were founded upon
the notion that everyone
should be free to pursue
life, liberty, and
happiness.
A new United Nations plan to involve all
nations in marshalling science to fix
environmental problems ranging from toxic
chemicals to climate change will be put to
the test from Monday at talks in Nairobi.
The 40-year-old U.N. Environment
Programme will open its annual governing
council to all the world's almost 200
nations, up from a current group of 58,
under reforms aimed at making the world
economy greener at a time of weak economic
growth.
The world’s biggest crude
oil exporter has a problem:
it is consuming too much of
it at home. If current
trends continue, it becomes
a problem not just for the
kingdom itself, but for the
world as a whole.
It snowed
in Saudi Arabia last week.
And, as temperatures in the
desert kingdom dropped, so
did its oil production.
C1 event. There are
currently 6 numbered sunspot
regions on the disk. Solar
activity is expected to be
at low levels on days one,
two, and three (19 Feb, 20
Feb, 21 Feb) with a chance
for an M-class flare. he
geomagnetic field is
expected to be at quiet to
unsettled levels for the
next three days
Crude exports from OPEC
kingpin Saudi Arabia fell to
7.062 million b/d in
December last year, the
lowest level since September
2011 when exports averaged
6.813 million b/d, data from
the Joint Organizations Data
Initiative, or JODI, show.
Several scientific
organizations are urging
President Obama to convene a
“national summit” on climate
change to identify effective
federal policies as well as
state and local government
actions.
"I never dreamed my electricity bill
would be over $1,000" a month, he says. And
with three wells keeping 8 acres of plants
and trees watered, along with power for his
offices, those bills now can hit as much as
$2,200 in a hot Texas summer.
So when he was recuperating last year
after back surgery, he put pencil to paper
to see what it would cost to install solar
power. What he found surprised him.
Harold Fitch, the man
charged with overseeing
Michigan's 15,000 oil and
gas wells, told a House
subcommittee Friday that
growing hydraulic fracturing
operations in his state have
not caused any groundwater
contamination or any other
serious environmental risks.
The vulnerability of our
water supplies to disruption
and contamination by
potential terrorist acts has
been well documented. Due to
the nature of this sort of
attack, casualties will be
inevitable. No remedial
actions are capable of
completely mitigating this
threat to consumers.
Education as to the nature
of a potential threat
empowers people at risk to
take actions to reduce loss.
Education, accompanied by
suitable public warning in
the case of a detected
event, saves lives, curtails
panic, and expedites
recovery.
Described as a "directed
energy orbital defense
system," DE-STAR is designed
to harness some of the power
of the sun and convert it
into a massive phased array
of laser beams that can
destroy, or evaporate,
asteroids posing a potential
threat to Earth. It is
equally capable of changing
an asteroid's orbit ——
deflecting it away from
Earth, or into the Sun ——
and may also prove to be a
valuable tool for assessing
an asteroid's composition,
enabling lucrative,
rare-element mining. And
it's entirely based on
current essential
technology. (A sort of
useful Death Star.)
Washington was the only man who could
have guided the Continental Army through a
long and difficult war, repeatedly defying
failure by sheer force of will. For eight
years, he held the Army together through
very slim hopes.
Washington was perhaps the only man who,
after winning that war, would have resigned
his commission, ignored calls to become
king, and returned home to his farm, Mount
Vernon. [to make his beloved moonshine]
King George III, told of Washington’s
plan, commented that if true it “placed him
in a light the most distinguished of any man
living” and made him “the greatest character
of the age.”
US Push for Peace Talks
Could Strengthen Taliban
US Unlikely to Ever Arm
Syrian Rebels
Groombridge: North Korea
Repeats Old Tactic with Nuke
Test
Tibet: China Squeezes Harder
To Exert Control
Hezbollah In The EU’s
Crosshairs, But Will Europe
Pull The Trigger?
Venezuela: Devaluation Hurts
Economy But Will Boost
Opposition
People in the American
Midwest are said to be on
average more conservative
and more libertarian than
people who live on the East
and West Coasts. And that in
turn is because people in
rural areas are said to be
more strongly tied to the
traditions of individualism
and self-reliance than those
in big cities such as New
York, Los Angeles,
Chicago—who politically are
more statist and tend to see
government as a
first-responder to perceived
economic and social
problems.
Richard M.
Nixon: He’s the
president who’s not usually
on anyone’s best list, but
for Indian country, he was a
champion.
Barack Obama:
It’s taken this “One Who
Helps People Throughout the
Land” – his adopted Crow
name – just three years to
show that he’s seriously
committed to taking action
on Indian issues,
In what was billed as the
largest climate rally in
U.S. history, thousands of
people marched past the
White House on Sunday to
urge President Obama to
reject a controversial
pipeline and take other
steps to fight climate
change.
Mesolithic hunter-gatherers
living on a meat-dominated,
grain-free diet had much
healthier mouths that we
have today, with almost no
cavities and gum
disease-associated bacteria,
a genetic study of ancient
dental plaque has revealed.
PESWiki covers the spectrum
of clean energy
technologies. While we
address conventional methods
such as solar, wind and
geothermal; we specialize in
unconventional or
"exotic" modalities such
as cold fusion, overunity
electromagnetic motors,
magnet motors, gravity
motors, and vortex
technologies. Here are five
of the best exotic
technologies we've found so
far, which are closest to
the market.
The water table beneath three Arizona
coal ash landfills lies 300 to 900 feet
deep. The ground is tightly packed clay. The
sites lie miles from populated areas.
But does that mean it's safe to bury
nearly 9 million pounds a year of toxic
materials in coal ash in unlined landfills?
Transocean Deepwater Inc.
pleaded guilty today to a
violation of the Clean Water
Act for its illegal conduct
leading to the April 2010
Deepwater Horizon disaster
in the Gulf of Mexico.
Irvine Ranch Water
District's innovative water
treatment project, located
in the city of Orange's El
Modena Park, cleans urban
runoff by filtering it
through water plants and
exposing it to the sun. The
naturally treated water is
then pumped into a storm
drain, where it makes its
way to upper Newport Bay and
eventually into the Pacific
Ocean.
Oxford University’s Mobile
Robotics Group (MRG) has
developed an autonomous
navigation system for cars
at a build cost of only
£5,000 (US$7,700). Installed
in a production Nissan LEAF,
the robot car uses off the
shelf components and is
designed to take over
driving while traveling on
frequently used routes.
The U.S. government is at
high risk of financial
exposure from climate
change, the Government
Accountability Office said
on Thursday, two days after
President Barack Obama vowed
to tackle the issue with or
without Congress' help.
The findings show that if
you burn the same amount of
calories, standing and
walking over the course of a
day is better than an hour
of intense exercise when it
comes to improving
cholesterol and preventing
diabetes.
Public's attention has
therefore turned to the G20
meeting this week, where
some have hoped Japan would
be asked to moderate its
policy. The Eurozone is
particularly concerned that
the relative strength of the
euro will delay its exit
from the economic malaise.
..
But with the world watching
and the Germans hoping for
action against Japan, the US
quickly stepped in to
support Japan's policy.
After all the US has been
following a similar policy
itself. This NY Times
article described the
situation quite well:
It's widely known that mercury levels in
the world's oceans and freshwater supplies
are increasing and that its more hazardous
form -- methylmercury -- is extremely
harmful to humans, wildlife and the
environment. But how to reduce it in our
water and food supplies is still a mystery
among top scientists.
Now, thanks to an increasingly popular
international competition founded by ITT
Corp. that focuses on such things, the
answers may be coming from an unlikely
source: a recent high school graduate from
North Carolina.
February 15, 2013
Cumulative global installed
solar PV capacity has topped
the 100-gigawatt (GW)
milestone, according to
preliminary numbers from the
European Photovoltaic
Industry Association (EPIA).
Roughly 30 GW worldwide was
connected to the grid in
2012, about the same as in
2011; there could be another
1-2 GW added to that 2012
total once final numbers
come out in May.
A former Tibetan Buddhist
monk protested Chinese rule
by killing himself through
self-immolation this month,
becoming the 100th person to
do so inside
Chinese-governed Tibet,
according to reports on
Wednesday by Tibet advocacy
groups.
Newly elected Prime Minister
Shinzo Abe wants to take
Japan's economy in a daring
new direction to pull it out
of two decades of stagnation
and deflation. It turns out
that his policies closely
resemble past efforts -- but
he wants to put far more
firepower behind them this
time. He aims to relax
already very loose monetary
policies and sharply raise
government spending to boost
demand.
The Afghan army is
training female special forces to take part
in night raids against insurgents, breaking
new ground in an ultraconservative society
and filling a vacuum left by departing
international forces.
"If men can carry out
this duty why not women?" asks Lena Abdali,
a 23-year-old Afghan soldier who was one of
the first women to join one of the special
units in 2011.
Not if pharmacists
have their way!
Pharmacists Planning Service
(PPS), a “public health,
consumer, and pharmacy
education” nonprofit, is
petitioning the FDA to
change the designation of
St. John’s Wort from “herbal
dietary supplement status”
to “behind pharmacy counter
status” (BPCS)—a designation
that requires pharmacist
consultation—citing
dangerous side effects and
drug interactions.
Despite the lack of
mainstream media coverage
for alternative therapies,
there are many botanically
based cures shown to be
effective against serious
and life threatening
illnesses, including cancer.
It may not be this year, but
Royal Dutch/Shell and other
oil companies will be back
to drill in northern
Alaska's seas, drawn by
political stability and
shallow waters.
Researchers at the
University of Michigan’s
Life Sciences Institute have
found that amlexanox, an
off-patent drug used to
treat asthma and canker
sores, can also reduce
obesity, diabetes and fatty
liver disease in mice.
Five states have introduced
seven different “Ag-Gag
bills” to silence people who
try to expose CAFO
practices.
Two of the most recognizable
wealthy businessmen in the
Western World appear to have
very different opinions on
the viability of renewable
energy.
The estimated 2-year-old
bird was found in pretty bad
shape at the Central
Landfill in Johnston, R.I.,
and taken immediately to a
local animal hospital.
An ailing bald eagle rescued
at the Central landfill in
Johnston, R.I., was shot,
according to veterinarians
trying to save the bird.
The lowly bolt is rarely
considered an exciting or
controversial subject. We
largely ignore them in the
assumption they will do
their job of fastening
together two pieces of wood,
steel, ceramic or other
materials in our cars, homes
and equipment.
Myelin is a fatty tissue
that covers the fibers
between nerve cells – it’s
not unlike the insulation on
electrical wiring. When that
tissue is compromised, the
cells have difficulty
communicating, and
neurological diseases such
as multiple sclerosis can be
the result. If the myelin of
MS sufferers could be
regrown, then it’s
possible that the
disease could be cured.
Recently, a team of
scientists successfully
regenerated myelin in mice,
using human skin cells that
were reprogrammed into brain
cells.
With a generator buzzing in
the open door of her
breezeway, one of her two
bichon dogs yapping at her
feet and a small electric
heater warming the couch
where she had slept under a
pile of blankets for the
past four nights, Anna
Oquendo was clearly
flustered.
Scientists have created a
new material that adsorbs
carbon dioxide emissions,
then releases the trapped
CO2 when irradiated with
sunlight
What did the founding
fathers know about science?
Global policy changes and
the crystalline silicon
module price crash have
brought the solar industry
to a pivotal point from
which it must transform and
thrive in a cost-conscious
environment, targeting
high-growth markets such as
China and India, says Lux
Research.
A group of scientists believe they have a
way to keep plastics from ending up in
oceans or being littered across the
countryside: classify plastics as hazardous
waste.
"We believe that if countries classified
the most harmful plastics as hazardous,
their environmental agencies would have the
power to restore affected habitats and
prevent more dangerous debris from
accumulating,"...
The U.S. Government
Accountability Office has
added two new areas to the
agency’s High Risk List –
limiting the government’s
fiscal exposure by better
managing climate change
risks and closing gaps in
weather satellite data.
An Australian company
seeking to build two Pacific
Northwest coal export
terminals at a cost of more
than $800 million has yet to
show a profit while piling
up a large load of debt,
according to a report
released Wednesday by
Seattle-based Sightline
Institute.
Fathy Ali is beyond anger as
he queues for hours in a
line of 64 trucks and buses
to fill his tank with scarce
subsidized diesel fuel,
known in
Egypt as "Solar."
A senior diplomat is
confirming Tehran's
announcement that it has
started upgrading its
nuclear program. He says
that U.N. officials just
back from Iran saw new
machines positioned to
vastly accelerate output of
material usable both for
reactor fuel and nuclear
warheads.
Today, 48 prominent
environmental, civil rights,
and community leaders from
across the country
demonstrated at the White
House demanding that
President Barack Obama
reject TransCanada’s
Keystone XL tar sands
pipeline and address the
climate crisis.
-
Much of the scientific research
published in medical journals is
bought-and-paid-for by the drug industry
-
Pharmaceutical advertisements can make
up about 99 percent of a medical
journal’s advertising revenue, and
allows the industry to demand favorable
product mentions in editorial pieces
(which they will sometimes write
themselves)
-
The drug industry uses many “tricks” to
turn otherwise negative studies
positive, including choosing study
participants who are more likely to
benefit from the treatment or even
hiding, or simply not publishing,
negative results
Gene L. Dodaro,
Comptroller General of the
United States and head of
the Government
Accountability Office,
announced yesterday two
areas had been added to the
agency’s High Risk List:
limiting the federal
government’s fiscal exposure
by better managing climate
change risks and mitigating
gaps in weather satellite
data. In addition, two other
areas—management of
interagency contracting and
IRS business systems
modernization—were removed
from the list because of
sufficient progress in
addressing past
vulnerabilities.
The EU could reduce its
energy use by more than a
third and generate almost
half of the remainder from
renewables by 2030 if the
right policies are put in
place, according to WWF
European Policy Office.
“He talked about a lot of
wonderful things that we’d
love to do as a country —
improve education and clean
up the blighted areas,
create opportunity — but
they can’t do that from
Washington,” the former
South Carolina Republican
tells Newsmax in an
exclusive interview.
“There’s no evidence we ever
could, and we can’t afford
it.
Long the cause of
conflict and distrust, Black
Mesa coal is becoming the
key to a new approach to
building a sustainable
future for the Native
peoples of the region and
the many non-Native peoples
who have lights and water
because of that coal.
The price, smell and color
should have been clear
tipoffs something was wrong
with shipments of horsemeat
that were fraudulently
labeled as beef, French
authorities said Thursday.
The government pinned the
bulk of the blame on a
French wholesaler at the
heart of a growing scandal
in Europe.
Less than four weeks ago the
International Energy Agency warned of a
tightening in the global oil market due to
higher-than-expected demand data from China
and the US.
The West’s energy watchdog hiked its
global oil demand estimate for the final
quarter of 2012 by a massive 710,000 b/d and
flagged a bullish 240,000 b/d upward
revision to its 2013 oil demand forecast.
Despite overwhelming
evidence that the growth of
the clean tech industry
benefits workers in red and
blue states alike — Texas
alone employs more clean
tech workers than there are
coal workers in the entire
country — some in Washington
still argue that clean tech
subsidies are a market
distortion that America
cannot afford.
...some economists said a
blizzard that slammed the
East Coast late last week
and difficulties smoothing
out the data for seasonal
fluctuations could have
artificially depressed
claims.
While they
were encouraged by the
decline, they urged caution
against reading too much
into the data.
Social Security and Medicare
are bankrupting the economy,
and the payroll tax needs to
be raised four percentage
points to keep Social
Security solvent, says
Boston University economics
professor and author
Laurence Kotlikoff.
“The entire country is
probably broke,” he tells
Newsmax TV in an exclusive
interview. “It’s in much
worse long-term fiscal shape
than any politician is
revealing to the public. I’m
not even sure they
understand the truth.
Certainly the president
doesn’t sound like he
understands.”
On the same day as the
president’s State of the
Union Address, Congress
tackled the contentious
issue of whether to allow
the exportation of U.S.
natural gas in its liquefied
form, or LNG. The Obama
administration has blessed
natural gas. But it is
uncertain if Congress will
erect impediments to limit
its sales overseas.
The latest in the LIBOR
scandal once again shined
some light on RBS, the UK
taxpayer-owned bank. The
firm's culture that
ultimately forced the UK
government to execute one of
the most expensive financial
rescues in history was even
worse than many imagined.
Ancient Catholic prophecies
by a revered Irish bishop
end with the chilling
prediction that the next
Pope to be selected by the
College of Cardinals to fill
Benedict XVI’s place will be
the last Pope.
St.
Malachy, an Archbishop of
Armagh who died in 1148,
left behind a list of 112
Popes that has amazed some
with its remarkable
accuracy.
The Marketplace Fairness Act
of 2013 would give states
the option to require the
collection of sales and use
taxes already owed [sic]
under State law by
out-of-state businesses,
rather than rely on
consumers to remit those
taxes to the States - if
states simplify their sales
and use tax systems. The
bill's backers say the
legislation is a move to
help small, "Main Street"
businesses.
Chemists at the University
of Burgos (Spain) have
manufactured a sheet that
changes colour in the
presence of water
contaminated with mercury.
The results can be seen with
the naked eye but when
photographing the membrane
with a mobile phone the
concentration of this
extremely toxic metal can be
quantified.
Coal miners on Wednesday
approved a five-year
contract with BHP Billiton,
clearing one obstacle for
the Navajo Nation takeover
of the Fruitland coal mine
in Fruitland.
No one's trying to take away
supertanker-sized soda
drinks in Mississippi, but
state lawmakers passed a
bill Wednesday to make sure
they never do.
There are less than two days
to go before states have to
decide whether they will go
it alone or partner with the
White House to set up
Obamacare health insurance
exchanges.
Half of
the states have already
decided to let the federal
government build the new
online insurance marketplace
for them, while a handful
will work with the
Department of Health and
Human Services and handle
limited parts of the
exchanges, according to
Politico.
In 2012, for the first time
in the U.S., wind energy was
the top source for new
electricity capacity at 42
percent of new capacity
added, accounting for the
majority of the 55 percent
total of combined renewable
energy installed in the U.S.
Today, U.S. wind energy
accounts for 6 percent of
the country's electric
generating capacity,
according to PA
International.
The definition of
nanotechnology is simple:
It’s merely technology that
manipulates matter at the
atomic level. When I think
of nanotechnology, however,
I often picture the
complicated, such as a tidal
wave of the tiniest of
robots doing the greatest of
medical work: repairing
organs, binding skin.
Net
metering is one of the most
emotionally charged issues
in renewable energy, and now
it's back in the spotlight.
A panel discussion at PV
America East in Philadelphia
last week explored ways that
utilities and ratepayers can
agree on how to quantify net
metering's benefit. Almost
simultaneously, a major
utility exec's public
criticism of net metering is
fanning the flames once
again.
Nitrogen in ocean waters
fuels the growth of two tiny
but toxic phytoplankton
species that are harmful to
marine life and human
health, warns a new study
published in the Journal of
Phycology.
Summer temperatures on the
Norwegian archipelago of
Svalbard in the High Arctic
are now higher than during
any time over the last 1,800
years, including a period of
higher temperatures in the
northern hemisphere known as
the Medieval Warm Period,
according to a new study. In
an analysis of algae buried
in deep lake sediments, a
team of scientists
calculated that summer
temperatures in Svalbard
since 1987 have been 2 to
2.5 degrees Celsius (3.6 to
4.5 degrees F) warmer than
during the Medieval Warm
Period, which lasted from
roughly 950 to 1250 AD.
Heresy may have cost Bob
Inglis his seat in the U.S.
Congress. As a six-term
Republican congressman from
one of South Carolina’s most
conservative districts,
Inglis told an audience at a
2010 campaign event that he
believed in human-caused
climate change. The fallout
from that comment helped
ensure his defeat by a Tea
Party-backed candidate.
The controversy between environmentalists
and the energy industry over hydraulic
fracturing, or "fracking", for natural gas
continues to grow.
The Natural Resources Defense Council
(NRDC) on Tuesday implored a Senate panel to
implement stronger environmental and health
regulations on the process, which involves
injecting chemicals beneath the ground to
loosen and extract natural gas reserves.
Computer attacks have become
so frequent and dangerous
that the government needs
help from private sector
companies to protect
information and
infrastructure, U.S.
Attorney for Western
Pennsylvania David Hickton
told the Tribune-Review.
US President Barack Obama on
Tuesday pressed Congress to
pass a cap-and-trade bill on
greenhouse gas emissions,
warning that he may use his
executive powers to impose
pollution controls if the
legislature does not act.
He also said in his
State of the Union address
that he would speed up
approval of new oil and gas
drilling permits, and
proposed that the US use
some of its oil and gas
revenue to fund alternative
fuels research.
Half of all
the pigs in the world live in China.
(AP)
There's a global campaign to force meat
producers to rein in their use of
antibiotics on pigs, chickens and cattle.
European countries, especially Denmark and
the Netherlands, have taken the lead. The
U.S. is moving, haltingly, toward similar
restrictions. Now the concerns about rampant
antibiotic use appear to have reached China,
where meat production and antibiotic use
have been growing fast.
-
Publication bias—the practice of
selectively publishing trial results
that serve an agenda—represents a
systematic flaw of the scientific basis
of medicine
-
Bias includes publishing positive
results but not the negative ones, not
publishing retractions of fraudulent
studies, and funding bias
-
Half of all clinical trials ever
completed on the medical treatments
currently in use have never been
published in the medical literature
If we
are rational and consider objective
scientific evidence of environmental
collapse including groundwater depletion,
topsoil loss, chemical contamination, ocean
dead zones, species extinction,
bio-diversity reduction and climate
disruption, we need to be apocalypticists,
argues Robert Jensen.
We are all apocalyptic now, or at least
we should be, if we are rational.
Obama asks Senate to OK
court-invalidated
appointees.
President Obama on Wednesday
renominated two Democratic
members of the National
Labor Relations Board whose
recess appointments were
ruled unconstitutional — the
same day House Republicans
moved to temporarily shut
down the agency.
C1 event. Solar activity is
expected to be very low with
a chance for C-class flares
on day one (15 Feb) and very
low with a slight chance for
C-class flares on days two
and three (16 Feb, 17 Feb).
The geomagnetic field has
been at quiet to active
levels for the past 24
hours. The geomagnetic
field is expected to be at
quiet levels for the next
three days (15 Feb, 16 Feb,
17 Feb).
Britain is better prepared
for a solar superstorm than
many countries, including
the United States. The Royal
Academy of Engineering has
released a
multi-disciplinary report on
space weather’s impact on
Britain, as part of the UK
National Risk Assessment.
The declassified portion of
the assessment shows the
level of UK preparedness in
the face of severe solar
storms, and outlines the
dangers Earth faces from
superstorms and how to avoid
or mitigate damage.
A bill introduced last week
seeks to give security
guards at nuclear power
plants the same liability
protections as a police
officer when it comes to the
use of force.
The Sierra Club officials
said Tuesday TVA could keep
rates lower by retiring coal
plants and making more use
of energy efficiency for
meeting power needs, than
spending money installing
scrubbers on the plants.
To see the winners in a
global currency war, all you
have to do is look East —
three of the biggest winners
will be Asian nations, but
China is not among them,
according to investment
adviser James Gruber.
The Inspector General (IG)
for the Department of Energy
today issued a report that
found the federal government
wasted millions of dollars
on a grant to a subsidiary
of a Korean corporation that
failed to meet basic project
goals and spent taxpayer
dollars paying employees to
watch movies and play board
games.
Crop-friendly rainfall and snow were
moving across drought-stricken areas of the
U.S. Plains hard red winter wheat region at
mid-week, providing much-needed relief ahead
of the growing season for the 2013 crop, an
agricultural meteorologist said on
Wednesday.
"Nebraska, Kansas and Colorado now have
the chance for two shower events over the
next two weeks that would offer some
improvement in topsoil moisture," said
Commodity Weather Group (CWG) meteorologist
Joel Widenor.
Last night’s State of
the Union address is the
second part of the
president’s inaugural
speech. Without having to
face the electorate again,
he is using his podium to
espouse liberal thinking,
particularly in the area of
climate change.
A nutritious diet that includes lots of
fruits and vegetables might be healthier for
humans but not necessarily healthier for the
environment, according to a French study.
After analyzing the eating habits of
about 2,000 French adults, and the
greenhouse gas emissions generated by
producing the plants, fish, meat, fowl and
other ingredients, researchers concluded in
The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition
that such a diet might not be the greenest
in environmental impact.
Syrian rebels knocked down
army defenses and moved in
on the country's second
largest airport Wednesday,
reportedly killing more than
40 soldiers and bringing
them closer to what could be
their biggest conquest since
the beginning of the civil
war.
The school’s website
says it’s a place “where
education is a journey” and
Noah Williams, who teaches
history at Highland Hall
Waldorf School in
Northridge, California takes
that seriously.
The Austin office of Public Citizen said
Tuesday that its new study shows that paying
electricity generators to add capacity is
not the solution to meeting the state's
growing demand for power.
The consumer advocacy group instead
proposes measures that reduce demand at peak
times.
New research using combined
records of ice measurements
from NASA's Ice, Cloud and
Land Elevation Satellite
(ICESat), the European Space
Agency's CryoSat-2
satellite, airborne surveys
and ocean-based sensors
shows Arctic sea ice volume
has declined 36 percent in
the autumn and nine percent
in the winter over the last
decade.
As the so-called
sequestration approaches,
jitters among defense
contractors are becoming
quite visible. 50% of the
cuts are expected to hit the
Pentagon budget. States like
Virginia, where the defense
industry is a major portion
of private employment as
well as a key source of tax
revenue, are also becoming
uneasy.
Iran Expanding Nuclear
Program Despite New
Diplomacy
Bangladesh: Government
Exploiting War Crimes Trials
Otto Reich: Colombia’s FARC
Guerrillas Lose Leverage
Mongolia: Government Gets
Greedy on Mining Contract
The sad truth is that many
well-meaning people drink
this poison every day and
are completely numb to it.
They have built up such a
strong immunity to this
poison that they actually
believe it’s natural and
acceptable. This, my
friends, is tragic.
President Barack
Obama delivered a crystal
clear message to Congress
and the nation last night in
his State of the Union
address: the time for
climate action is now.
By making a strong climate
statement last night and in
his inaugural address, the
president is finally
demonstrating the leadership
this country needs if we are
to make progress.
UPDATE:-Asteroid
2012 DA14
NASA Television will provide
commentary starting at 2
p.m. EST (11 a.m. PST) on
Friday, Feb. 15, during the
close, flyby of a small
near-Earth asteroid named
2012 DA14. NASA places a
high priority on tracking
asteroids and protecting our
home planet from them. This
flyby will provide a unique
opportunity for researchers
to study a near-Earth object
up close.
Last week, MEPs (members of the European
Parliament) voted overwhelmingly to end the
wasteful practice of fish "discards". While
a victory for those concerned about the
future of our fisheries, what to do with the
fish currently thrown overboard remains
unknown.
But a food distribution system taking
North America by storm, championing
collaborative communities and sustainable
fresh food, may be part of the answer —
Community Supported Fisheries.
The main body of the
building spirals up in
decreasingly-sized tiers
which finally culminate in a
tubular spire, with a belfry
47 meters (154 ft) above the
ground. Daylight enters the
building through slender
oblong windows which are
arranged something like the
black keys on a church
organ.
The Hopi and Navajo tribes have won
something considerable out of a former
coal-fired power plant in Laughlin, Nev.,
that used to buy their coal: Pollution
credits worth perhaps $10 million.
In a reversal of fortune, a California
utility could ultimately pay tribes to help
create the infrastructure for renewable
energy to be sold into California, rather
than purchasing less-expensive coal.
After more than a year of
design drafts, a group of
bright UNLV students is
ready to break ground on a
fully functioning house
powered exclusively by the
sun.
Freddie Mac yesterday
released the results of its
Primary Mortgage Market
Survey® (PMMS®), showing
average fixed mortgage rates
unchanged from the previous
week and remaining near
their record lows as they
continue to support housing
demand, translating into a
pick-up in home prices in
most markets.
Production from tight oil
plays in the Williston Basin
in Montana and North and
South Dakota, and the
Permian Basin in Texas and
New Mexico , along with
tight oil production from
the Western Gulf of Mexico,
should boost crude output to
an average of 7.25 million
b/d in 2013, the EIA said.
According to Lux Research,
China and India are the most
promising high-growth
markets for solar, while
Japan, U.K., France and
South Korea are also
becoming attractive markets.
Retail sales in January 2013
rose by an expected 0.1%
following 0.5% gains in both
December and November 2012.
The month saw very muted
gains in the usually more
volatile components with
motor vehicles down only
0.1% and gasoline stations
up only 0.2%.
The U.S. Department of
the Treasury announced today
that it has signed a
bilateral agreement with
Switzerland to facilitate
the implementation of the
information reporting and
withholding tax provisions
commonly known as the
Foreign Account Tax
Compliance Act (FATCA).
Obama's "Energy Security
Trust" -- which he announced
this week in the State of
the Union address -- would
redirect about $200 million
in royalties for drilling on
federal lands to pay for the
development of biofuels,
electric batteries and cars
and trucks powered by
natural gas, the White House
said yesterday. The trust
would operate for 10 years
and spend a total of $2
billion.
This coming weekend we will
celebrate President's Day,
remembering some of our
nation's first leaders…and
science! You might be
surprised to learn that in
America, science and
democracy were forged
together from the very
start.
After our post in
early December discussing
the possibility that MBS,
particularly the 30yr FNMA
had become a "crowded
trade", we've received
numerous e-mails arguing
that based on the Fed's
recent actions, agency MBS
has more upside.
Furthermore, the US consumer
got so used to mortgage
rates constantly moving
lower, the reversal
(discussed in that post) of
that trend seemed
unfathomable to many. But
that is in fact what
happened as the 30yr
mortgage rate stopped
declining
In January of 2009, when Obama first took
office, there were 31.9 million Americans on
food stamps. Today, there are 47.6 million
-- an increase of almost 50
percent. And food prices are insane --
$6 for a 12 oz. package of romaine lettuce.
$1 for a single apple. $12 for enough
"cheap" meat to feed a family of four for a
single meal.
Yes, these are problems in and of
themselves. But they're also symptoms of a
much deeper problem.
-
What’s normal and what’s not when you
look into the toilet after using it? You
can learn a great deal about your
overall health by taking a look at your
stool and noting its color, size, shape,
consistency, odor and other features
-
Your toileting habits, such as your
frequency of elimination and the ease
with which you move your bowels, can
provide additional clues to your health
status
-
If you know what to look for, you may be
able to detect health problems early
enough to stop them in their tracks,
including serious diseases like celiac
disease, hepatitis, urinary tract
infections and stones, malabsorption
disorders, inflammatory bowel disease,
pancreatitis, cancer and others
-
Suggestions are given for optimizing
your gastrointestinal function,
including how to build healthy gut
flora, and what things to avoid due to
their potential adverse effects on your
GI system, which is crucial to your
immune health
For most of the seven months since it
rumbled to life, a wood-burning power plant
in East Texas hasn't been producing
electricity for Austin Energy customers
despite a $2.3 billion contract.
Simply put, the plant's electricity is
now too expensive to use. But, even as the
plant sits mostly idle, Austin Energy pays a
fee to cover its operating costs. The
utility won't say how much it pays to keep
the plant staffed or the cost of the
electricity the plant would produce, citing
the competitive nature of the contract.
Global shale oil production
could reach 14 million b/d
by 2035, 12% of the world's
total oil supply,
accountants PwC said in a
new report.
"We
estimate that this increase
could reduce oil prices in
2035 by around 25%-40%
($83-$100/barrel in real
terms) relative to the
current baseline EIA
projection of $133/barrel in
2035, which assumes low
levels of shale oil
production," PwC said,
referring to the US Energy
Information Administration's
long-term outlook.
The world’s cumulative solar
photovoltaic (PV)
electricity capacity
surpassed 100 gigawatts (GW)
in 2012, achieving just over
101 GW, according to new
EPIA market figures. This
global capacity to harness
the power of the sun
produces as much electricity
energy in a year as 16 coal
power plants or nuclear
reactors of 1 GW each. Each
year, the world’s PV
installations reduce CO2
emissions by 53 million
tons.
February 12, 2013
Even though it ultimately
resulted in workplace safety
changes, there is a real
reluctance to discuss
Thursday's third anniversary
of the explosion that
occurred at the Kleen Energy
power plant, which killed
six workers and injured at
least 50 others.
A powerful but deep
earthquake shook a broad
swath of Colombia and
Ecuador on Saturday, sending
frightened people fleeing
into the streets, but there
were no immediate reports of
significant damage or
deaths.
Agenda 21, is a grand plan for global
“sustainable development,” which President
George H.W. Bush (and 177 other world
leaders) agreed to in 1992. In July 1993,
President Bill Clinton brought the global
scheme directly into the U.S. government
when he signed an executive order creating
the President’s Council on Sustainable
Development, which avoided any review or
discussion by Congress or the American
people.
“Sustainable development” sounds like
a nice idea—that is, until you scratch the
surface and find that Agenda 21 and
sustainable development are actually cloaked
plans to impose the tenets of social justice
and socialism on the world.
Dinosaurs died off about 33,000 years
after an asteroid hit the Earth, much sooner
than scientists had believed, and the
asteroid may not have been the sole cause of
extinction, according to a study released
Thursday.
Earth's climate may have been at a
tipping point when a massive asteroid
smashed into what is now Mexico's Yucatan
Peninsula and triggered cooling temperatures
that wiped out the dinosaurs, researchers
said.
To Bert Dohmen, editor of
the Wellington Letter and
founder of Dohmen Capital
Research Institute, the 0.1
percent contraction in U.S.
gross domestic product (GDP)
in the fourth quarter is
more than a blip on the
economy’s recovery path. It
proves the economy isn’t
even in recovery mode, he
says.
“We are already
in a recession,” he tells
Newsmax TV in an exclusive
interview. “We got into a
recession last year. If you
factor in the actual rate of
inflation instead of the
phony CPI [consumer price
index] or GDP deflator that
the government uses, the
economy has been in a
recession overall.”
Swedish frozen-food company
Findus withdrew all its beef
lasagna ready meals from
supermarkets after tests
revealed they contained up
to 100% horsemeat. But the
investigation took an
EU-wide dimension as British
investigators found evidence
of "gross negligence or
possibly criminality"
involving several countries.
An EU budget haggled out in
marathon talks on Friday cut
deeply into a new transport
and energy fund and
sacrificed ambition to make
farming greener, but broke
ground by committing a fifth
of spending to the climate.
Cellphone users are “overtaxed,” often
with hidden charges, and the combined
federal, state and local rates can top 20
percent, according to the Tax Foundation.
The number of cellphone subscribers has
grown from 48.7 million in 1997 to 321
million in 2012 — more than the official
U.S. population — and 34 percent of
households now use only wireless phones.
Average wave size will
increase in many parts of
the southern hemisphere over
the twenty-first century,
but decrease in the north,
according to an
international study on the
impact of climate change on
oceanic activity. The study,
published in Nature Climate
Change last month (13
January), predicts a wave
height increase of between
20 and 30 centimeters in an
area covering at least seven
per cent of the surface of
the world's oceans. This is
due to the poleward
intensification of the
westerly winds in the
southern hemisphere,
resulting from climate
change.
Score one for the strategy
of pressuring corporations
to act now for environmental
sustainability. Whereas
governments often meet,
greet, and retreat on big
issues like deforestation,
environmentalists have
convinced a major Asian pulp
company to stop scalping the
rainforests of Indonesia to
produce paper and packaging.
DARPA recently revealed
information on its ARGUS-IS
(Autonomous Real-Time Ground
Ubiquitous Surveillance
Imaging System), a
surveillance camera that
uses hundreds of smartphone
image sensors to record a
1.8 gigapixel image.
Designed for use in an
unmanned drone (probably an
MQ-1 Predator), from an
altitude of 20,000 ft (6,100
m) ARGUS can keep a
real-time video eye on an
area 4.5 miles (7.2 km)
across down to a resolution
of about six inches (15 cm).
We're surrounded by
electromagnetic fields
almost everywhere these
days. Just because they're
almost imperceptible doesn't
mean they can't be used as a
source of energy though. One
student in Germany recently
built the Electromagnetic
Harvester, a small box that
allegedly charges an AA
battery using just the
electromagnetic fields given
off by the likes of power
lines, vehicles and
electronic gadgets.
Greenhouse-gas emissions
have dropped dramatically in
the United States since
2005, and the nation now
appears on track to achieve
the 17 percent reduction
sought by President Obama by
2020, thanks to a trend
toward increased fuel
efficiency for vehicles and
a switch by power companies
from coal to cleaner-burning
natural gas made possible by
the shale gas revolution.
Sen. Lisa Murkowski,
R-Alaska, said Saturday the
current regulatory regime
was unnecessarily stifling
energy development and
overall economic growth, and
urged adoption of a raft of
changes she said would
improve the economy and
reduce U.S. dependence on
foreign energy sources by
2020.
"I am personally very interested in
seeing a real analysis done on the cost to
bury utilities underground. I know it's
expensive, but I have to believe that with
the cost of recovery, the disruption to
personal and work lives over time and given
the increased frequency of storms of this
severity," it's worth a review, Patrick
said.
As of this afternoon, an estimated
120,000 homes and businesses were still
without power.
With fiercer weather events predicted,
and the state's history of long-lasting
power outages, the governor said, "We need
to start thinking long term about how we
adjust.
There is only so much fresh
water in the world of the
kind people need to drink to
live. Recycled water, or
gray water, is water that
has been used for household
activities such as taking
showers or washing dishes.
Then there is water that is
a bit more dirty such as
from the toilet. There are
or will be a time and a
place where such water will
have to be used as is or
will be treated so as to
reuse once again. Even now
in places like Singapore and
Namibia, limited supplies of
freshwater are being
augmented by adding highly
treated waste water to their
drinking water.
We have the practical solutions at hand
to protect consumers, the climate, and our
environment from the growing costs of our
oil use.
How? It all comes down to one simple
fact:
Using less is the real oil solution.
President Obama has already
provided climate change and
energy issues a prominent
place in his second term
rhetoric, giving climate
change and the environment
the most space of all issues
in his inaugural address. He
also vowed in December to
make climate change and
energy one of his top three
priorities in his second
term.
The re-election of President
Barack Obama and his
commitment to address global
warming may play into a
decision the utility will
make this month about the
future of such facilities.
Idle No More’s
founders and leaders are
determined to keep the
movement’s momentum going
and to maintain pressure on
aboriginal leaders and the
federal government to enact
concrete change.
"It's paradoxical but we have too many
fish this year," the older Ludvigsen said.
"Prices have fallen 30 percent ... We're
having to work far harder."
Just over six years ago, an article in
the U.S. journal Science projected that all
fish and seafood species, on current trends,
would collapse by 2048.
Western oil sanctions
directly targeting Iran's
oil revenues have already
slashed the country's crude
exports to its main
customers in Asia by close
to 400,000 b/d between 2011
and 2012, and volumes look
set to fall further as new
US restrictions combine with
existing measures to put
further pressure on Tehran's
ability to find markets for
its crude.
A bipartisan group of
western state lawmakers
again have introduced bills
in the US House of
Representatives and Senate
to speed up permitting for
renewable energy projects on
federal lands.
...work is continuing on the
E-Cat technology... "1 – we
are working very strong to
manufacture our plants. In
our factories the work has
never been so intense as it
is in this period. 2 – the
report of the independent
third party will be
published, as I always said.
Whatever the result. 3 – the
efficiency and the
convenience of the E-Cats is
very simple to measure."
Engineers at Oregon State
University have made a
breakthrough in the
performance of microbial
fuel cells that can produce
electricity directly from
wastewater, opening the door
to a future in which waste
treatment plants not only
will power themselves, but
will sell excess
electricity.
The bold and bipartisan
Senate immigration plan put
forth by Sen. Marco Rubio is
a good step in the right
direction and should be
embraced as such by
conservatives of all parties
who want to continue the
“Reagan legacy.”
The Federal Reserve’s
massive easing program is
going to end in financial
disaster, says Peter Morici,
a professor at the Robert H.
Smith School of Business at
the University of Maryland
and former chief economist
at the U.S. International
Trade Commission.
Cold winter temperatures
have been causing concern
for many Navopache Electric
Cooperative (NEC) members.
With colder temperatures
came higher usage, resulting
in higher electric bills.
[ed" many responses
from customers reject this
explanation.]
The former Navy SEAL Team 6
member who actually killed
Osama bin Laden in the May
2011 raid on the al-Qaida
leader's Pakistan compound
says he's been largely
abandoned by the government
he served for 16 years,
according to his first-ever
public interview exclusively
with Esquire magazine.
At age 80, Bill Ruckelshaus
still remembers those
pro-environment days in the
early 1970s, when his old
Republican boss,
then-President Richard
Nixon, urged Americans to
make peace with nature and
his party joined Democrats
to pass laws protecting the
air and water.
The high seas that cover almost half the
Earth's surface are a treasure trove with
little legal protection from growing threats
such as over-fishing and climate change,
according to a new international group of
politicians.
"High levels of pillage are going on,"
David Miliband, a former British foreign
secretary, told Reuters. He will co-chair
the Global Ocean Commission, which will
start work this week and give advice to the
United Nations on fixing the problems.
The Northeastern and
Mid-Atlantic states in the
Regional Greenhouse Gas
Initiative, RGGI, have
proposed to reduce the 2014
regional emissions budget of
carbon dioxide, CO2, by 45
percent.
He said that if Congress
doesn't pass a budget the
Pentagon will have to absorb
$46 billion in spending
reductions in this fiscal
year and will face a $35
billion shortfall in
operating expenses.
When poll respondents were
asked how they would best
describe the U.S. Congress,
the most frequently chosen
option was
“Incompetent/Inept/Terrible/Bad”
— 40 percent described
Congress that way.
Irregular heartbeat, stroke,
and arthritis are among the
serious health problems
facing Pope Benedict XVI as
he becomes the first pontiff
to step down in 600 years.
The religious leader’s
increasing frailty is
typical of an elderly
patient with a history of
stroke, Dr. Chauncey
Crandall, one of the
nation’s top cardiologists,
told Newsmax Health
There are currently 4
numbered sunspot regions on
the disk. Solar
activity is expected to be
at low levels on days one,
two, and three (12 Feb, 13
Feb, 14 Feb). The
geomagnetic field is
expected to be at quiet to
unsettled levels for the
next three days (12 Feb, 13
Feb, 14 Feb).
-
Three recent studies severely challenge
the claim that the flu vaccine will
protect you against the flu. A
multicenter study by researchers in
eight European countries indicated that
overall vaccine effectiveness against
influenza A/H3N2 in the first months of
the season was 38%, but after
mid-February, it dropped to -1%.
-
Norwegian researchers blame vitamin D
deficiency for the latest flu epidemic
in the Netherlands.
-
You can prevent the flu and other
flu-like diseases using dietary
interventions, making sure your vitamin
D and gut flora are optimized, being
more meticulous about washing your
hands, getting enough exercise and
sleep, and taking natural antibiotics
like oil of oregano and garlic.
-
Twenty-one percent of American parents
are now delaying or refusing some or all
of the recommended childhood vaccines.
-
After reviewing 40 studies, an IOM panel
has declared that the US recommended
childhood vaccination schedule, which
includes 24 immunizations by the age of
2, is “completely safe.”
Richmond Federal Reserve
Bank President Jeff Lacker
is advocating a different
way to end bailouts than
other central bank officials
are: let them fail.
If “too big to fail”
institutions are allowed to
fail, financial companies
would get the message that
they won’t be rescued and
would return to market
discipline, he told American
Banker.
“Government
support is not the answer to
financial problems,” Lacker
said.
Salt has quietly been
slipping out of dozens of
the most familiar foods in
brand-name America, from
Butterball turkeys to Uncle
Ben's flavored rice dishes
to Goya canned beans.
The Federal Reserve's
ultra-loose monetary
policies – not international
tensions or supply factors –
are a prime reason for high
oil prices, says Stephen
Schork, editor of The Schork
Report, a subscription
service providing technical
and fundamental daily views
of the energy cash and
derivatives markets.
Senate Democrats are plowing
ahead with a committee vote
on Chuck Hagel's nomination
to lead the Pentagon,
despite Republican demands
for more financial
information from the nominee
and threats by one prominent
lawmaker to hold it up over
questions about Benghazi.
“No confirmation without
information,” Graham told
host Bob Schieffer. “I don’t
think we should allow
Brennan to go forward for
the CIA directorship, or
Hagel to be confirmed for
secretary of defense, until
the White House gives us an
accounting.”
The Social Security
Administration Inspector
General has found that 4,317
people were able to obtain
two Social Security numbers
— even though none of them
were American citizens.
Political pressure to lift
Virginia’s longstanding ban
on uranium mining threatens
the health of the Roanoke
River Basin, which supplies
drinking water for over a
million people, warns the
Southern Environmental Law
Center.
With two-thirds of college
graduates owing at least
$25,000 on student loans and
53 percent of recent grads
unemployed or underemployed,
taxpayers could be
responsible for tens of
billions of dollars for
loans that won’t be repaid.
Switzerland: Has the
Currency Cap Worked and Can
It Hold?
Drone Leaks Could Undermine
Counterterrorism Efforts
Nigeria Violence Unlikely to
Stop Despite Ceasefire Offer
North Korea: Nuclear Test
Shows Limits of Chinese
Influence
Russia: Space Exploration
Plan Backed by Military
Goals
Bahrain’s Goal: Keep Shiites
Down and Iran Out
Mexico Cleans Up a Judicial
MessMexico Cleans Up a
Judicial Mess
British MP: UK Military
Being Hollowed Out
The city of Phoenix wants to
mark its place on the map,
quite literally, with a new
observation tower dubbed
“The Pin.”
George Mitchell, the father
of the fracking revolution,
is said to have joked that
it took him 20 years to
become an overnight success.
He spent years attempting to
marry hydraulic fracturing
with horizontal drilling,
and finally succeeded in the
Barnett Shale in the early
1980′s.
The deal announced in
December hit a rough patch
recently when Shelly cast
doubt on whether the Nation
would take over the mine.
Some US farmers are considering returning
to conventional seed after increased pest
resistance and crop failures meant GM crops
saw smaller yields globally than their
non-GM counterparts.
Farmers in the USA pay about an extra
$100 per acre for GM seed, and many are
questioning whether they will continue to
see benefits from using GMs.
Several reports on gun ownership around
the world clearly refute the assertion that
the abundance of guns in the United States
leads to a high rate of firearm homicides.
Americans are the biggest gun owners by
far, with an estimated 270 million civilian
firearms, in addition to those used by law
enforcement and the military. That’s
according to the Small Arms Survey of 178
nations conducted by the Switzerland-based
Graduate Institute of International and
Development Studies.
The US Nuclear Regulatory
Commission's Office of
Investigations has been
conducting an "expansive
investigation of the
completeness and accuracy of
information that Southern
California Edison provided
to the NRC regarding the
steam generators" at San
Onofre, NRC Chairwoman
Allison Macfarlane said in a
Friday letter to two federal
lawmakers.
A new intelligence
assessment has concluded
that the United States is
the target of a massive,
sustained cyber-espionage
campaign that is threatening
the country’s economic
competitiveness, according
to individuals familiar with
the report.
We are excited to report
that food freedom has won
out in South Carolina, where
a factory farm front group
recently tried, but failed,
to stamp out longstanding
state laws that recognize
the freedom of individuals
to buy and sell raw milk
throughout the Palmetto
State.
I’m sure you’ve heard about
how Allen West lost his
Congressional seat after
election officials in St.
Lucie County, Florida
“found” some 2,000 ballots
after the polls closed.
Well, True the Vote just
filed a historic lawsuit
against those election
bureaucrats. We are going to
find out exactly what
happened and make sure it
never happens again!
“ I have a family
traditional interest in
being here and seeing this
way of life continue and
want to be able to continue
to do what my father,
parents, grandparents and
great-grandparents did”
stated Tom, during a phone
interview. “I see GMOs
moving into our cropland and
taking over our various
crops and commodities and I
see that as a threat. Small
and medium-sized farmers one
of these days won’t be there
because of the economic
damage this is going to do
to us.”
Some folks in the
media are making a big deal
out of the US trade deficit
decline in December. ..Yes,
that's an impressive showing
indeed. But let's take a
look at the chart, because
such numbers should not be
viewed in isolation. The
decline in deficit follows a
sharp increase a month
earlier.
The scientists found that
many species, particularly
wildflowers such as creeping
buttercup, harebell, yarrow,
and autumn hawkbit, were
much less abundant in areas
with high nitrogen levels,
such as central Britain, the
Netherlands, northern
Germany and Brittany. But
particularly surprising was
the discovery that many
species declined at very low
levels of pollution, often
below the legally-recognised
'safe' level.
The Egyptian pound continues
to weaken, as the central
bank attempts to stem the
run on the currency by
imposing among other
measures a tight trading
range. Anecdotal evidence
suggests that a number of
wealthy individuals and
businesses are quietly
converting savings into hard
currency and to the extent
possible depositing funds
abroad. Some are buying gold
as inflation accelerates
Continued uncertainty in the
future direction of climate
frameworks, political
instability of the Middle
East and North Africa (MENA)
region, energy price
volatility, and the global
economic recession are just
some of the issues keeping
energy leaders up at night,
according to research from
the World Energy Council.
The
Arizona Snowbowl was the
subject of a state
investigation after their
fake snow made with sewage
effluent came out yellow.
February 8, 2013
With Obama's second term now
underway, it's becoming
clearer with every passing
day just how much control he
and his minions want to have
over the minute details of
your life. This week,
they're going after guns.
Next week ... it could be
your vitamins. Think I'm
kidding? Keep reading.
Naperville, Illinois, a
suburb of Chicago, has
started the Naperville Smart
Grid Initiative which
requires so-called smart
meters to be installed in
every home. Residents
opposed to the smart meters
have been fighting the
initiative for over two
years.
Cases of Alzheimer's disease
in the United States are
expected to triple in the
next 40 years as so-called
baby boomers are reaching
old age, according to a
study published Wednesday
that suggests there could be
close to 14 million
sufferers by 2050.
Americans increasingly
support regulating
greenhouse gas emissions and
requiring utilities to
switch to lower-carbon fuel
sources, a national poll
indicates.
John Shea's stone tool
studies have helped
archaeologists identify how
stone points were used, and
he has documented the
sophisticated toolmaking
skills of the oldest known
Homo sapiens. More
recently, Shea has been
doing his best to shake up
human origins research with
a radical proposal: That the
idea of "behavioral
modernity", a term long used
by scientists to desccribe
behaviors such as the use of
symbolism, art, and
elaborate tools, should be
thrown into the scrap heap.
"The document doesn't get to
grips with the risks of a
spill in a meaningful way,"
said Ruth Davis of
Greenpeace, which passed the
document to Reuters.
Officials confirmed the text
was genuine.
US consumer demand for
flex-fuel vehicles, which
can run on high levels of
ethanol, is not strong
enough for automakers to
market them in the country,
representatives of several
major automakers said
Thursday.
"Somebody
has to demonstrate some
interest" in FFVs in the US
before General Motors will
boost its offerings of those
vehicles like it has in
Brazil,...
Freddie Mac yesterday
released the results of its
Primary Mortgage
Market Survey®
(PMMS®), showing mortgage
rates either unchanged or
lower and should continue to
aid in the ongoing housing
recovery.
-
Several supermarkets in the UK have been
found selling beef burgers containing
nearly 30 percent horse meat, as well as
pig meat. Supermarket giant Tesco has
promised to find out how it happened
-
In the United States, federal health
officials recently reported that at
least 16 people in five states were
sickened by ground beef contaminated
with salmonella. About half of them
required hospitalization, but none have
died so far
-
The more steps your food goes through
before it reaches your plate, the
greater your chances of contamination
becomes. If you are able to get your
food locally, you eliminate numerous
routes that could expose your food to
contamination
-
Food fraud is on the rise. According to
a report by the U.S. Pharmacopeial
Convention (USP), a whopping 800 new
records of food fraud have been added to
its ever expanding database over the
past two years
The quest for longer and
healthier life, if not
immortality, has been part
of the human experience
since we evolved the ability
to recognize the total
annihilation of individual
death. Our understanding of
the biology of aging at the
molecular level is advancing
so rapidly that it appears
inevitable that another
decade or two of life will
be enabled before long. A
new step in what may be the
right direction has just
been published by
researchers at the
University of California,
Berkeley.
Driven by aggressive biofuel
mandates, rapid growth will
cause great strain on
biomass by 2030, according
to Lux Research. Using
today’s technologies, an
area the size of Russia
would need to be cultivated
to replace all of petroleum
use for chemicals and fuels
– feedstock innovation will
be needed to keep growing
biomass’s market share.
Following the first flight
of its Phantom Eye in June
of last year, Boeing has
performed software and
hardware upgrades in
preparation for its second
flight that will see it
climb to higher altitudes.
This week, the
hydrogen-powered unmanned
aircraft system made a
significant step towards
such a second flight with
the completion of taxi
testing at Edwards Air Force
Base in California.
California Governor Jerry
Brown has signed a bill that
will allow Google (and other
companies) to test
autonomous vehicles on
state-owned roads. The bill
– which is similar to those
already enacted in
Arizona, Florida,
Hawaii, and Oklahoma –
allows the state to oversee
safety and performance
standards.
U.S. spending on Social
Security and healthcare will
double to $3.2 trillion a
year over the next decade,
threatening a sharp rise in
the national debt unless
Congress acts to avoid the
danger, congressional
researchers warned on
Tuesday.
Arizona Public Service will
soon start collecting more
money from customers in
order to cover fixed costs
as sales drop while
customers conserve energy.
Within the next decade, the
U.S. biofuel market could be
worth more than $60 billion
with 26 biorefineries
expected to open by 2015,
according to research by
environmental policy
advocates Environmental
Entrepreneurs (E2).
Duke Energy’s decision
to close its troubled
nuclear unit in Florida may
typify the times:
inexpensive and abundant
natural gas coupled with the
uncertainty of building coal
plants and the high expense
associated with nuclear
facilities.
Concerned about a collapse
of the dollar, a growing
number of state legislators
are urging their states to
issue their own currencies.
Politicians in 13
states in all are pressing
their states to either allow
or consider alternative
currencies, according to
CNNMoney. Proponents —
generally Tea Party members
and conservative Republicans
— worry that the Federal
Reserve’s easy monetary
policy will cause
hyperinflation like
Germany’s Weimar Republic
after World War I.
Copper thieves have a new method for
stealing in Winnsboro.
William Medlin, electric utility director
with the Town Of Winnsboro, said the thieves
are playing a risky game with electric
current by stealing the copper groundwires
from utility poles. In at least one
instance, wire was connected to a four
wheeler so more of it could be pulled off
the line than just off the pole.
I love seeing my fellow
Americans become proactive
in defending our natural
born rights, but as great as
it is to see people taking
initiative to become active
on their own, I also realize
that it’s not necessarily
easy for some people to get
active on their own. I
would go as far to say that
there are many of you who
want to get involved in our
great cause, but may not
have the same opportunities
as others to do so.
In the case of the Crystal
River plant, you leave them
right where they are,
perhaps until the year 2073.
-- Because the federal
government has stalled on a
national strategy for
nuclear waste storage,
highly radioactive spent
fuel rods could end up being
stored on the Crystal River
site for between 40 and 60
years.
NASA’s Mars rover Curiosity
made the historic first
drilling ever attempted on
the Red Planet on February
6. The drilling, at a patch
of flat, vein-bearing rock
called "John Klein" at Gale
Crater, was the 4X4-sized
robot’s first full use of
its drilling unit and a
major test before it uses
the drill to collect
pulverized rock samples for
analysis in its internal
laboratories.
Duke Energy Carolinas filed
5,012 pages of written
testimony, data analyses and
appendices Monday in support
of its request for an
overall 9.7 percent North
Carolina rate hike.
The statistics are
horrifying: 34 percent of
American Indian and Alaska
Native women will be raped
in their lifetimes and 39
percent will be subjected to
domestic violence; on some
reservations, Native women
are murdered at more than 10
times the national average;
over 85 percent of Natives
who are victims of rape or
sexual assault describe
their offenders as
non-Indian. Under the
current law, tribal courts
have no jurisdiction to
prosecute non-Indian
perpetrators of felony
violence against Native
women, and U.S. attorneys
decline 67 percent of the
cases referred to them.
The US is consuming energy
considerably more
efficiently and with lower
emissions than just five
years ago thanks to a slew
of modern technologies that
are changing decades-old
patterns, research firm
Bloomberg New Energy Finance
and industry group the
Business Council for
Sustainable Energy find in a
new report.
Research of the medium- and
large-scale U.S. commercial
building market conducted by
building energy analytics
company FirstFuel has
revealed that half of all
energy-efficiency savings in
commercial buildings are
achievable through
operational improvements --
at little or no cost to
building owners and
operators.
Energy Secretary
Steven Chu’s goodbye was
much the same as his hello.
When the Nobel prize-winning
scientist accepted President
Obama’s offer in 2008 to
lead the federal agency, he
said that science would be
his guidepost. And now that
he will be leaving in
February, he is repeating
the same mantra.
During January 2013,
ENSO-neutral continued,
although below-average sea
surface temperatures (SST)
prevailed across the eastern
half of the equatorial
Pacific. While remaining
below average, a high degree
of variability in the weekly
Niño 3 and 3.4 indices was
apparent during the month
The Fed has not confirmed if the document
posted online by Anonymous was genuine
The US's central
bank has confirmed information was stolen
from its servers during a hack attack.
The Federal Reserve told the Reuters news
agency it had contacted individuals whose
personal information had been involved.
U.S. Congressman Paul A. Gosar, D.D.S (R
- AZ), formerly of District 1, announced his
original co-sponsorship of H.R. 24, the
Audit the Fed legislation originally
authored and championed by former
Congressman Ron Paul (R-TX).
“We must demand a full audit, so that the
American people can find out what the Fed is
doing to our dollars and our economy. I will
continue to fight on the front lines of this
battle to get Audit the Fed passed through
Congress.”
Greenhouse gas emissions
from U.S. power plants fell
4.6 percent in 2011 as more
generators were switched to
cleaner-burning natural gas
and renewable sources from
coal, according to new data
from the Environmental
Protection Agency.
British soldiers in
Afghanistan have been issued
palm-sized Black Hornet Nano
UAVs to scout around corners
and obstacles for hidden
dangers
Trade complaints are nothing
unusual, but they seem to
have become more common in
the world of solar these
days. The U.S. Trade
Representative Ron Kirk said
Wednesday he's taking the
first step toward lodging a
World Trade Organization
complaint against India for
a policy that blocks some
U.S. companies from a
growing market.
-
You can “change” your brain through
thought itself, and emerging research is
showing that mental effort can actually
result in physical changes to your mind
and body
-
People who simply imagined doing
strength-training exercises increased
their muscle strength by 22 percent,
compared to 30 percent among those who
physically did the exercises
-
You can harness the power of your mind
to not only help you improve cognition
and learning, but also help you develop
muscle strength, recover movement lost
due to a stroke, or even overcome pain,
depression or anxiety
A little over two years ago,
we looked at a hand-held
device known as the
Infrascanner Model 1000,
which uses near infra-red
light to detect traumatic
brain injuries. Now, the
InfraScan company has
received US Food and Drug
Administration approval to
market the 1000’s improved
successor, the Infrascanner
Model 2000.
Iran earned $110 billion
from oil exports in the
2011-2012 Iranian year,
which the National Iranian
Oil Company said was a
record for the OPEC state,
students' news agency ISNA
reported Wednesday.
"Iran's oil exports were
valued at $110 billion in
the last Iranian year that
ended March 19, 2012," NIOC
managing director Ahmad
Ghalehbani was quoted as
saying.
Back in April we
discussed Ireland's attempt
to restructure the so-called
promissory note. It seems
that last night they finally
succeeded.
The world currency system is
riding down the road to
catastrophe, says James
Rickards, senior managing
director of Tangent Capital
Partners.
The world
already has entered a
currency war that began in
2010 on the heels of the
Federal Reserve’s massive
easing program, he tells
Wall Street Journal Digital
Network. Since then, plenty
of nations have joined in,
including Brazil,
Switzerland and Japan, says
Rickards, author of
“Currency Wars: The Making
of the Next Global Crises.”
Domestic landfill gas use
has surpassed another
milestone as more than 600
locations around the country
are now operational,
according to a federal
program that tracks such
data.
In these sober times, as we battle our
way through our workdays, laboring more and
earning less than we should, it's tough to
find the time to relax, let alone a moment
to reflect on deeper thoughts, like the
legacy we will leave.
But let's take a second and do it.
For half a century, Chinese
scientists have been
flocking to a spot on the
eastern rim of the North
China Plain, China's
breadbasket, to probe
pressing agricultural
questions. The region just
north of the Yellow River is
ground zero for tackling
food-security challenges
such as flood control,
drought, wind erosion, and
soil alkalinity. To this
list of concerns,
researchers have now added
climate change and its
potential impact on grain
yields.
It turns out that the
biggest financing market is
not in corporate bonds or
even mortgages. It's trade
receivables. According to
the Receivables Exchange,
$11 trillion of trade
receivables is originated by
small and mid-size
businesses and another $6
trillion by large
corporations, for a whopping
total market size of $17
trillion.
NASA is getting ready to
ride the “winds” of space on
sails lighter than gossamer,
yet large enough to cover a
small field. The space
agency’s Solar Sail
Demonstration, also known as
the Sunjammer Project, may
launch as early as 2014 when
it will send the largest
solar sail yet built into
orbit, to demonstrate the
technical viability of the
device.
NASA held a media
teleconference yesterday
(Thursday) Feb. 7th, to
discuss asteroid 2012 DA14
which will have a very close
flyby of Earth on Feb. 15,
2013. Also discussed are
NASA's efforts to find
potentially hazardous
near-Earth objects.
Last year's drought took a
big bite out of the two most
prodigious US crops, corn
and soy. But it apparently
didn't slow down the spread
of weeds that have developed
resistance to Monsanto's
herbicide Roundup
(glyphosate), used on crops
engineered by Monsanto to
resist it. More than 70
percent of all the the corn,
soy, and cotton grown in the
US is now genetically
modified to withstand
glyphosate.
The agency is out with its
second year of greenhouse
gas emissions data that show
that the waste sector –
municipal solid waste
landfills, industrial waste
landfills, industrial
wastewater treatment systems
and facilities that operate
combustors or incinerators
for the disposal of
non-hazardous solid waste –
accounted for 103 million
metric tons of carbon
dioxide equivalents in 2011.
Unusually public details
about a newly signed solar
project deal in New Mexico
raise some interesting
questions about the
purchasing power of solar
energy, how close it's
getting to grid parity --
and just how much pressure
is on upstream suppliers to
fulfill that objective.
The new water jets replace
earlier commercial jet
systems and, according to
the Navy, can pump out half
a million gallons (1.9
million liters) of
high-density seawater per
minute, pushing the LCS at
over 40 knots (46 mph, 74
km/h) while providing more
power for less weight.
The Swoosh will wash your
face cloths, but forget
about your sheets.
With time once again running
out to avoid $1.2 trillion
in automatic spending cuts,
conservative activist Grover
Norquist, who invented the
“anti-tax increase” tax
pledge embraced by
Republicans, tells Newsmax
TV's Steve Malzberg that
conservative legislators
should allow the cuts to
proceed barring an 11th-hour
shift in the president’s
negotiating tactics.
Some vaccine manufacturers seem to agree!
The CDC lists seven vaccines for
2012–2013 flu season. Of those, three of the
vaccines acknowledge in their package insert
that “There have been no controlled clinical
studies demonstrating a decrease in
influenza disease after vaccination.”
Barack Obama won re-election
by perpetrating three
frauds.
Saudi Arabia, for a second
consecutive month, tried to
act pretty much by itself
and narrow the gap between
projected supply and demand.
As a result, overall OPEC
production declined.
Defense Secretary Leon
Panetta on Wednesday laid
out a grim list of spending
cuts the Pentagon will have
to make in the coming weeks
that he said will seriously
damage the country's economy
and degrade the military's
ability to respond to a
crisis.
On Thursday, February
7, the National Museum of
the American Indian in
Washington, DC will host
"Racist Stereotypes and
Cultural Appropriation in
American Sports"—a symposium
that promises to prove
interesting given the
current debate over the name
of the city's NFL franchise
There are currently 4
numbered sunspot regions on
the disk.
IB. Solar
Activity Forecast: Solar
activity is expected to be
at low
levels on days
one, two, and three (08 Feb,
09 Feb, 10 Feb).
he geomagnetic field is
expected to be at quiet to
minor storm levels for the
next three days (08 Feb, 09
Feb, 10 Feb).
The United States will
struggle to reduce
greenhouse gas emissions to
promised levels by 2020, a
report from a prominent
think tank warned this week,
but the federal government,
states and industry already
have the means at their
disposal to achieve such
goals.
By 2016, Seattle would
prohibit single-single
homes, multi-family
dwellings and businesses
from throwing away organic
waste, according to an
ambitious update to the
city's Solid Waste
Management Plan that's being
considered by lawmakers.
A 7-year-old Mary Blair
Elementary School student
says he's confused about
getting in trouble for
trying to save the world
from evil, though Thompson
School District officials
contend that the boy broke
one of the school's
“absolutes.”
President Obama's health
care law will push 7 million
people out of their
job-based insurance coverage
— nearly twice the previous
estimate, according to the
latest estimates from the
Congressional Budget Office
released Tuesday.
Long considered the future
home of a new soccer field,
the newly capped Titcomb Pit
landfill is now being eyed
as the possible site for a
solar farm.
A circuit court judge ruled
Wednesday that a pair of
environmental groups will
get to question state health
regulators about their
failure to act on a permit
application that could limit
the amount of arsenic and
other pollutants migrating
into the Waccamaw River from
unlined coal ash ponds at
Santee Cooper's Grainger
electric generating plant
here.
In the past couple of
decades, nearly 900 planets
have been identified outside
of our Solar System with
thousands more candidates to
be considered. Among the
most exciting of these
exoplanets are the so-called
“super-Earths” – planets
somewhat larger than the
Earth, yet some of which
might be capable of
supporting life.
Unfortunately, a team led by
Helmut Lammer at the Space
Research Institute (IWF) of
the Austrian Academy of
Sciences has produced new
models that indicate some of
these super-Earths may
really be mini-Neptunes,
with deep, hydrogen-rich
envelopes covering a small
rocky core.
Iran’s supreme leader,
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei,
rejected any idea of
bilateral talks with the
United States on Thursday,
in a speech in which he
seemed to dismiss the views
of Iranian officials —
including the country’s
foreign minister — who had
advocated for such
negotiations.
Once again some analysts in
Europe question the potency
of the so-called currency
wars launched by Japan and
the US. The euro-yen
currency cross has had an
unprecedented rally,
changing the export
landscape where Japan and
Europe (particularly
Germany) compete.
When it comes to
national parks or World
Heritage sites, caretakers
often operate with the
philosophy that the more
educated the visitors are,
the less damage is done.
Fifty-one of the 398
national parks in the U.S.
include rock art. The
majority of rock images
outside of parks, however,
are not protected by rangers
or government officials—the
more remote sites on public
or private land sometimes
are overseen only by
volunteer stewards.
The team found that
earthworms do not, as was
suspected, stimulate carbon
sequestration in the soil,
which helps to reduce
greenhouse gas emissions.
Instead, they actually
increase greenhouse gas
emissions through a variety
of ways.
Signs of Syria's Hand in
Attack on US Embassy in
Turkey
Egypt: Escalating Violence a
Dire Threat to Economy
China-Japan Tensions Rise
After China Points Radar at
Japanese Warship
Dutch Bank Nationalization
Sparks Fears Across Eurozone
Syria: Opposition Shift
Reignites Debate Over
Immunity for Assad
China: Is Huawei Out After
Three Strikes?
Ambassador Reich: Good Start
for Mexican President Pena
Nieto
While you may think nothing
of these symbols, they can
actually offer a great deal
of information regarding the
toxic chemicals used in the
plastic, how likely the
plastic is to leach, how
un-bio-degradable the
plastic is, and ultimately
the safety of the plastic.
Have you ever thought about
what's REALLY wrong with
America today? Conservatives
blame the Leftist media for
America's ills. And liberals
blame the greedy Right. The
99% blames the 1%. The 1%
says, "don't look at us,"
it's Congress who makes the
rules. Schoolteachers blame
terrible parents. Parents
blame the teacher's unions.
As talk of serious gun
control dominates our
politics and media, many
people are warning of an
assault on our Second
Amendment and the threat of
government tyranny if we
civilians are disarmed.
Tragically, government
tyranny is not a future
nightmare; government
tyranny is a reality here
and now. And in the 21st
century, the tyrants don’t
care if we have guns or
not. The weapons they're
using to tyrannize us don't
have a chamber or a barrel –
the real weapons of tyranny
do not involve guns and
cannot be halted by guns.
Rather, the real weapons of
tyranny slowly bankrupt us
and threaten our future and
security. And there's only
one true "protector" that
rises to our defense.
New research has found that
tobacco plants can be
genetically modified to
produce antibodies against
the rabies virus
The Arizona governor's office received a
Navajo Nation request for federal emergency
relief Friday, a week after the tribe issued
its own declaration of emergency because
frozen pipes had affected water supply to
2,000 families.
The request points to what tribes have
long cited as a problem: Because the law
treated them like local governments, tribes
have had to ask the state government to
deliver their requests for federal aid.
But that is changing.
Bartlett Durand is the rare
local-food entrepreneur who
has no trouble turning a
profit: Durand’s Black Earth
Meats processes and sells
grass-fed beef, and these
days grass-fed beef sells
like crazy.
The U.S. federal government announced on
Thursday that it had 150 million U.S.
dollars in tax credit for clean energy
manufacturers, which aimed to strengthen its
global competitiveness.
The available funds are not a fresh grant
from the U.S. Congress but the left-over of
the Advanced Energy Manufacturing Tax Credit
program that started in 2009, said the
Department of Energy and the Treasury in a
statement.
The United States will not
be able to meet its goal of
slashing greenhouse gases 17
percent by 2020 from a 2005
baseline without taking
additional steps to target
emissions, a new report
found.
U.S. President Barack Obama
has wide powers to order
both pre-emptive and
retaliatory cyberattacks
against enemies, a secret
legal review found.
The U.S. will add more solar
power in 2013 than wind
energy for the first time as
wind projects slump and
cheap panels spur demand for
photovoltaic systems,
according to the head of
Duke Energy Corp.'s
renewable-energy development
unit.
Now they want to vaccinate
pregnant women with
potentially dangerous
vaccines. Where will this
lunacy end?
The old
DTP vaccine caused brain
damage in infants. The new
DTaP vaccine has uncertain
risks—and also may not work.
The government solution is
to start vaccinating even
before birth.
With much of the US relying
more on natural gas for
power generation and
large-scale switching from
coal to gas becoming a
reality last year,
California and the Pacific
Northwest are looking to a
different future — one with
less dependence on the
fossil fuel, despite its
price advantage even in the
years ahead.
Several major oil companies
recently released their 2012
earnings, and their profits
soared to new heights. It is
not breaking news that oil
companies reap huge benefits
from our oil use. In fact,
as a new Union of Concerned
Scientists report shows,
the vast majority of
what you spend at the pump
ends up in oil company
coffers.
A shift back to drier weather is expected
in most of the key wheat growing areas of
the drought-stricken U.S. Great Plains hard
red winter wheat region, an agricultural
meteorologist said on Wednesday.
Early in the week there had been outlooks
for significant rain and/or snow in much of
the region which would have given the
battered wheat crop a welcome dousing, but
patterns have changed to a drier mode, he
said.
Wood-fired biomass has
tended to mean feedstock
from North America and
generation in Europe, yet
recent developments in Asia
suggest the picture could
soon become more complex.
World food prices stabilized
in January after falling in
the previous three months,
the United Nations food
agency said on Thursday, but
it warned that adverse crop
weather could cause violent
price spikes due to tight
grains stocks.
February 5, 2013
Consumers worrying about the
greenhouse effect -- or just
how spending too many
greenbacks on gas will
affect their household
budgets -- should check out
the super-efficient cars
automakers are offering in
2013.Roughly a half-dozen
electric cars or plug-in
hybrids offer the equivalent
of 95 miles per gallon or
more in combined
city/highway driving, while
some boast a shockingly good
100 mpg or higher.
Nearly half of employed
college graduates in the
United States hold down jobs
that don’t require a
four-year college education
— including 323,200 waiters
and waitresses, 115,520
janitors and cleaners, and
83,028 bartenders.
The hacking collective known
as Anonymous has pulled off
yet another embarrassing
attack against the United
States government. While
most people were enjoying
Super Bowl 47 on Sunday, the
group published login and
private information
belonging to more than 4,000
American bank executives on
the Alabama Criminal Justice
Information Center website.
I owe these unions.
And after spending an
estimated BILLION dollars to
re-elect Barack Obama and
maintain control of the U.S.
Senate, the union bosses
couldn't agree more.
Argentina announced a two-month price
freeze on supermarket products Monday in an
effort to stop spiraling inflation.
The price freeze applies to every product
in all of the nation's largest supermarkets
— a group including Walmart, Carrefour,
Coto, Jumbo, Disco and other large chains.
The companies' trade group, representing 70
percent of the Argentine supermarket sector,
reached the accord with Commerce Secretary
Guillermo Moreno, the government's news
agency Telam reported.
The Arizona Corporation
Commission (ACC) has
eliminated the
performance-based incentives
(PBIs) provided to
commercial solar system
buyers by the state’s two
investor-owned utilities
(IOUs). It also drastically
reduced the upfront
incentives (UFIs) provided
by the IOUs to residential
solar system buyers.
Space rock has 'destructive
power of H-bomb'
The space rock will be the closest ever
recorded as it shoots past our planet on
February 15.
Alarmingly, it will fly BENEATH
satellites and has the power to flatten
London if it hit the capital.
BP has lost $896 million
worth of business with the
US military as a consequence
of its guilty plea to
criminal charges stemming
from the 2010 Macondo well
blowout and oil spill in the
Gulf of Mexico, according to
Defense Logistics Agency
data.
Today, national
organizations Earthjustice
and the Interstate Renewable
Energy Council, Inc. (IREC)
commended the Hawaiian
Electric (HECO) utilities’
path-breaking plans to
enable more rooftop solar
systems to connect to the
grid. The utilities and
clean energy stakeholders
laid out a new and
innovative “Proactive
Approach” to planning for
rooftop solar growth as part
of a multi-party working
group convened by the
Hawai‘i Public Utilities
Commission (PUC), which just
concluded its deliberations
last week.
On Monday, the
California Public Utilities
Commission
unanimously approved the
sale of power from
SolarReserve's
150-megawatt
Rice Solar Energy Project
to
Pacific Gas & Electric
via a 25-year power purchase
agreement. This project will
be the first large-scale
solar project in the
state to include
energy storage capabilities,
SolarReserve reported.
Seven out of 10 companies
responding to the latest
Carbon Disclosure Project
(CDP) survey have admitted
that they think climate
change has the potential to
significantly impact their
revenues, with many warning
that they expect climate
impacts to be felt within
the next five years.
A new report paints a rosy picture of
America’s energy future and points to some
surprising repercussions for a nation
suddenly awash in cheap oil and gas.
In its “Energy Outlook 2030,” the
London-based energy firm BP asserts that the
United States will be 99 percent energy
self-sufficient by 2030, largely due to
shale gas and oil produced by hydraulic
fracturing.
Public opinion in the United
States has shifted in favor
of doing something about
climate change, and
politicians who want to get
elected need to take note of
it, according to a new study
by the Yale Project on
Climate Change
Communication.
Hydrogen is often hailed as
a promising
environmentally-friendly
fuel source, but it is also
relatively expensive to
produce. However, new
research conducted at
Princeton University and
Rutgers University poses the
opportunity to produce
hydrogen from water at a
lower cost and more
efficiently than previously
thought possible.
Two powerful conservative
groups say a new American
Crossroads' initiative,
formed to work against
Republican candidates it
deems unelectable, is just
another attempt to muzzle
the GOP's true base.
A federal court delivered a
blow to the biofuel industry
Friday when it ruled the
Environmental Protection
Agency (EPA) must lower
certain targets in a key
biofuel-blending rule.
At a time when Americans are
demanding answers from
government and an
administration that promised
transparency, we cannot, WE
WILL NOT, let this Benghazi
scandal fade away and
Clinton’s desire to gloss
over details may have
created more discussion than
anything else.
For over 100 years, the
method used to assess the
microbiological safety of
drinking water has remained
essentially unchanged:
bacteria present in water
are allowed to grow on solid
nutrient media (incubated at
a warm temperature), and the
colonies formed are then
counted. The intestinal
bacteria Escherichia coli
and enterococci serve as
indicators of faecal
contamination. At the same
time, the heterotrophic
plate count (HPC) is
determined as a measure of
general microbiological
quality. This method
quantifies all the
microorganisms present which
can reproduce at
temperatures of around
20–45°C (mesophilic).
According to the global
standard, the number of
colonies formed should not
exceed 300 per millilitre
Eco-friendly refrigerators,
dishwashers, and laundry
machines don't just save you
money – they're also better
for the environment. Factory
automation could reap the
same rewards, but optimizing
production lines isn't easy.
That's where the energy
efficiency analysis
software, developed by the
EU-funded Energy Software
Tools for Sustainable
Machine Design (ESTOMAD)
project, enters the picture.
he U.S. biodiesel industry
broke the 1 billion gallon
mark in 2012 for the second
consecutive year, according
to year-end production
figures released Wednesday
by the EPA. The total volume
of nearly 1.1 billion
gallons was roughly flat
over 2011 production,
exceeding it by just 6
million gallons.
Sweet Remedy
documents the quest of Cori
Brackett (diagnosed with
M.S. in 2002) to find
answers to this question:
why is there such an
escalation in neurological
disorders in the U.S. today?
This powerful documentary
takes a realistic look at
current health and
health-related political
issues, and uncovers the
truth about the numerous
toxins in our U.S. food
supply. Journey with Cori as
she also talks with others
stricken with M.S. You'll
discover how their health
dramatically improved by
eliminating toxins from
their diets.
Expectations of rising
interest rates in the US are
creating demand for traded
HY corporate loans (also
called "leveraged loans").
These products typically pay
LIBOR plus a fixed spread,
which means that the coupon
will grow if short-term
rates increase.
Boy, advertisers make
everything look so easy and
uncomplicated, don’t they?
And why wouldn’t you go
ahead and get the vaccine?
It’s simple, affordable (as
low as $5 in some
locations), and it will most
certainly protect you from
getting the flu . . . or
will it?
The Navajo Nation is
facing such severe water
shortages due to frozen
waterlines, run-down water
storage containers and
weather-damaged water
systems that President Ben
Shelly has declared a state
of emergency for the
reservation.
With Washington State on the
verge of a ballot initiative
that would require labeling
of some foods containing
genetically engineered
ingredients and other states
considering similar
measures, some of the major
food companies and Wal-Mart,
the country’s largest
grocery store operator, have
been discussing lobbying for
a national labeling program.
A director of commodity trading giant
Glencore on Sunday questioned the conversion
of corn into ethanol biofuel, saying it can
contribute to higher prices.
Critics of using foodstuffs to make fuel
say the process can drive up food prices by
reducing available supplies, hitting the
world's poorest people hardest.
Growing palm oil trees to
make biofuels could be
accelerating the effects of
climate change, new research
showed on Wednesday, adding
further weight to claims the
crop is not environmentally
sustainable.
An Arizona high school
student is speaking out
after he was suspended from
school for making a picture
of a gun and an American
flag the desktop background
on his school-issued
computer.
The media spin is that she
has been an excellent
Secretary of State. But its
just spin.
Look at
the record.
The global fuel cell and
hydrogen energy market is
projected to be worth over
$180 billion in 2050 and
revenues in the fuel cell
sector are projected to grow
at a rate of 26% annually
over the next decade,
according to a report
released today by the
Partnership for Advancing
the Transition to Hydrogen
(PATH).
For seven years, Ben
Bernanke has played Master
of the Universe, that is, he
has been chairman of the
Federal Reserve. Bernanke
vehemently denies his
actions put the U.S. economy
at risk. Au contraire.
Having prevented the U.S.
economy's collapse, the
Fed's actions have yielded
profits to taxpayers.
Naysayers lament money
doesn't grow on trees, value
can't be created through the
printing press. Bernanke
calls out his critics and
points to low "core"
inflation as proof his
policies are working.
An official who gave a
report to a nuclear power
plant operator on geological
faults at the plant has been
booted from Japan's nuclear
agency, officials said.
Kamakura Corporation
reported Friday that the
Kamakura index of troubled
public companies closed the
month of January at 6.84%.
The index reflects the
percentage of the Kamakura
coverage universe that has a
default probability over 1%.
An increase in the index
reflects deteriorating
credit quality.
The parent company of German
luxury automaker
Mercedes-Benz, Daimler, has
announced it’s formed an
alliance with Ford and
Nissan to help accelerate
the development and eventual
launch of hydrogen fuel cell
technology for
cars.
These tenets are broken down into seven
categories:
- Producing more
- consuming less
- clean energy technology
- energy delivery infrastructure
- effective government
- environmental responsibility
- energy policy that pays for itself
-
The final mercury treaty session took
place in Geneva, Switzerland in January
2013; the final treaty included
important provisions to reduce and
eliminate mercury pollution, one of them
being a requirement for countries to
phase down the use of dental amalgam
(mercury fillings)
-
The provisions are in line with growing
attitudes around the world, where
phase-outs of mercury in dentistry have
already occurred or have been
recommended
The potential crude reserves
are scouted. Producers are
pioneering. But, will any of
the just-emerging tight
crude plays scattered across
the US onshore post
significant results in 2013?
Solar activity has been at
low levels for the past 24
hours. There are currently 2
numbered sunspot regions on
the disk and no
Earth-directed coronal mass
ejections expected.
The geomagnetic field is
expected
to be at quiet
levels for the next three
days (05 Feb, 06 Feb, 07
Feb).
The Senate's top Republican on energy
issues, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, is
proposing a U.S. energy policy that would
call for increased drilling while opposing
laws to cap greenhouse gases that are blamed
for global warming.
"Energy 20/20" is a signal of how the
Republicans want to proceed on energy policy
in the coming years as the nation wrestles
with contentious debates over oil drilling,
fracking and climate change.
Scott Brown has decided not
to run in the special
election for the U.S. Senate
seat of newly tapped
Secretary of State John
Kerry.
The decision
of the former Massachusetts
senator — a well-liked GOP
power player — means Kerry’s
seat will likely stay with
the Democrats.
The sea urchin has revealed
a way to ceaply and quickly
convert CO2 into calcium
carbonate
Sen. Richard Shelby is pushing
legislation that would replace today’s
income tax code with a 17 percent flat tax
and reduce tax returns to the size of a
postcard.
“Our tax code and regulations total tens
of thousands of pages that are complicated
and confusing,” the Alabama Republican said
in a statement posted on the votesmart.org
website.
Don’t repay the national
debt, Slate says. Instead,
we can use perpetual bonds,
a British financial
innovation from the 18th
century.
The British
in 1752 converted their
national debt into
consolidated annuities that
became known as consols,
according to the news
website. The consols paid
interest like regular bonds,
but did not require the
government to redeem them.
More than 20 comprehensive
studies over the past decade
have found that renewable
electricity standards are an
effective and affordable way
to downsize our reliance on
coal-burning power plants,
the top source of carbon
emissions that are the
primary cause of global
warming.
A new Berkeley Lab report,
"Electricity Bill Savings
from Residential
Photovoltaic Systems:
Sensitivities to Changes in
Future Electricity Market
Conditions", explores
long-term uncertainties in
the utility bill savings
that customers receive from
photovoltaic systems.
Understanding the past is
always useful in predicting
the future. In this case,
how climate fluctuates over
time due to natural effects
before and and his industry
affected it. Tree-rings,
ice-cores, and speleothems
can all be used to
reconstruct climate of the
past millennia. But these
records may be of local
effects and not global as
well as being impacted by
other events not clear in
the mists of time.
Chicago has had at least 44
homicides already this year.
Three days before Hadiya’s
murder, seven people were
killed in Chicago within 24
hours, the youngest a 16
year old boy. The mother of
one of those shot had
already lost her three other
children to gun violence.
Stingray enables up to four
people to sleep suspended in
the air
-
Early intervention with minimally
invasive dentistry can eliminate 80
percent of future dental interventions
on the vast majority of patients
-
By identifying hypocalcific areas and
using a miniature air abrasion tip to
clean out those pits, fissures and
grooves, removes the initial decay. The
area is then sealed with glass ionomer.
The end result is that those teeth tend
to not decay in the future
Once there were vast forests
covering North America and
Europe. What happens to the
climate if they were
returned? Planting trees in
an area where there are no
trees now, can reduce the
effect of climate change by
cooling temperate regions
finds a study in BioMed
Central's open access
journal Carbon Balance and
Management. Afforestation
could lead to cooler and
wetter summers by the end of
this century if it was done
now. Of course doing it now
is a problem not only of
resources of what it
replaces and the effects
that may have elsewhere.
Flu Shot Hogwash: Media
Complicit in Striking Fear
into the Masses It’s
everywhere, it’s
everywhere! Or so it
seems. Kids home from
school, co-workers not
showing up to work,
grandparents ending up in
the hospital. It is
official: the flu has
struck.
Spanish Slush Fund Scandal
Increases Pressure on
Government
Japan Looks to Become a
Bigger Player on World Stage
Slovenia: Government Teeters
on Brink of Collapse
Iran’s Jailing of US Pastor
Spells Trouble for Obama
Hoekstra: New Middle East
Instability Stems From US
Failure to Look Ahead
Russian Economy Set to
Outpace Europe But Not World
2013 World GDP to Be an
Encore of 2012
China to Boost Nuclear
Program with Rail-Based
ICBMs
High-Level UK Debate on the
Implications of North
Korea's Human Rights
Atrocities
Ecuador: Correa Follows
Chavez Playbook for
Re-election
Progress Unlikely at New
International Trade Talks
In a recent Nation piece, the
wonderful Elizabeth Royte teased out the
direct links between hydraulic fracturing,
or fracking, and the food supply. In short,
extracting natural gas from rock formations
by bombarding them with chemical-spiked
fluid leaves behind fouled water—and that
fouled water can make it into the crops and
animals we eat.
But there's another, emerging
food/fracking connection that few are aware
of. US agriculture is highly reliant on
synthetic nitrogen fertilizer, and nitrogen
fertilizer is synthesized in a process
fueled by natural gas.
The survey of 1,034 energy
users indicates that
consumers want to simplify
how they engage with their
energy usage. More than half
(57 percent) of respondents
said that they would prefer
to have a centralized
repository to manage all
their utility driven energy
consumption -- even more so
with the younger generation
(69 percent).
“I offered him $5 million if
he showed, just showed,
these college transcripts
and also some documentation.
Very simple stuff. Passport
documentation. And he didn’t
do it,” Trump said. “Then, I
gave him a certain number —
and I said I would raise it
very, very substantially
from $5 million, and he
still didn’t do it.”
The financial system is like
a supernova star that grows
until it runs out of energy,
explodes and collapses,
warns Bill Gross, managing
director of fund giant
Pimco.
The US economy essentially
stalled in the fourth
quarter of 2012, according
to the government's
first estimate of economic
performance, contracting by
0.1% on an annualised basis
(after adjusting for
inflation). Inventories and
federal defence spending
subtracted heavily from GDP,
but the underlying recovery
remained intact—both
consumer spending and
business investment expanded
robustly.
U.S. Department of Energy's
(DOE) computer network was
hacked in January, but no
classified information was
compromised, U.S. media
reports said Monday.
U.S. plug-in electric cars
started 2013 slowly, as
sales of the Chevrolet Volt,
the Toyota Prius Plug-In and
Nissan Leaf each had deep
dropoffs in January from
December.
U.S. President Barack Obama
has wide powers to order
both pre-emptive and
retaliatory cyberattacks
against enemies, a secret
legal review found.
A group of US solar
manufacturers Friday sued
the Obama administration
over a loophole in tariffs
announced last year on
Chinese-made solar panels
and cells, saying a
deliberately included
exemption in the penalties
allows some imports to
continue, harming the
domestic industry.
Georgia Power’s decision to retire
2,000 megawatts of fossil-fired generation
is becoming commonplace. Those units are
expendable given the current environmental
rules and the cost of natural gas.
Altogether, the utility will be
shedding 15 coal and oil facilities while
nationally, 42,000 megawatts of older
coal-fired plants will go, many by 2015 and
all by 2020.
-
The European Food Safety Authority has
discovered a hidden viral gene in 54 of
84 commercially approved genetically
engineered crops—a finding that
highlights deep flaws in the regulatory
process
-
Plant pathologists speak out about the
potential dangers of the viral gene
fragment in GE plants, stating it may
confer “significant potential for harm,”
and call for a total recall of affected
crops
Wall Street Journal editors
are none too impressed with
the Federal Reserve’s
decision Wednesday to stick
with its massive easing
program.
The Fed is
buying $85 billion of
Treasurys and
mortgage-backed securities a
month and plans to keep
short-term interest rates
near zero until unemployment
drops to 6.5 percent, from
7.8 percent in December.
A newly-developed device
known as a soft x-ray
electrostatic precipitator
has demonstrated an
unprecedented ability to
neutralize airborne
pathogens, such as bacteria
February 1, 2013
The past few years has seen
Google embark on an ambitous
program of investment in the
renewables space, the most
recent announcement seeing
Google investing $200
million in a Texas wind
farm. So where else has
Google been putting its
money?
The U.S. Federal Reserve is
paying close attention to
risks linked to its bond
buying program, including
the possibility of losses on
its massive portfolio that
might touch off a political
firestorm and harm the
central bank's independence.
Whether it’s in hospitals,
restaurant kitchens or our
homes, harmful bacteria such
as E.coli are a
constant concern. Making
matters worse is the fact
that such bacteria are
increasingly developing a
resistance to antibiotics.
This has led to a number of
research projects, which
have utilized things such as
blue light, cold plasma and
ozone to kill germs. One of
the latest non-antibiotic
bacteria-slayers is a
hydrogel developed by IBM
Research and the Institute
of Bioengineering and
Nanotechnology in Singapore.
Polar bear plunges, which
involve taking a dip in the
ocean in the winter, are
said to invigorate and
energize, but they can also
generate an enormous shock
to your system
An attempt by Chevron Corp.
to unfreeze its assets was
dismissed Wednesday by an
appeals court in Argentina,
where the winners of a $19
billion environmental
judgment in Ecuador are
suing to force the oil
company to pay.
Rumors of hyperinflation and the total
collapse of the dollar have been circulating
for years. Now, after five years of a
steadily worsening economy, we may finally
be standing on the precipice of a dramatic
economic collapse.
Doug Hagmann, a private investigator with
high level connections inside the Department
of Homeland Security, recently revealed that
DHS is getting ready for a "massive civil
war."
Wharton management
professor Michael Useem,
returning from his 11th trip
to the World Economic Forum
in Davos, reports that
confidence in the global
economy is back "in the
world's inner circles of
business and policy." But he
also suggests that the
challenge ahead lies in
efforts to avoid the
arrogance and excesses
responsible for the 2008
financial crisis. Below is
his commentary on the
recently concluded Forum.
Over the past few years,
blue light has allowed us to
understand heart problems,
control brain functions, and
activate muscle tissue. Now,
another biomedical function
can be added to its list –
because it’s known to have
antimicrobial qualities,
it’s been used to stop
infections of the skin and
soft tissues.
A new
science-fiction-made-real
medical device restores
sight to the blind, and it
may soon be available in the
United States.
It took over two-and-a-half-years for the
journal Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics to
finally accept a paper outlining a new
meteorological hypothesis in which
condensation, not temperature, drives winds.
If proven correct, the hypothesis could have
massive ramifications on global policy—not
to mention meteorology—as essentially the
hypothesis means that the world's forest
play a major role in driving precipitation
from the coast into a continent's interior.
The price of solar panels has never been
lower, and both the state and federal
government offer generous subsidies.
So Matthew Dunay's solar panel
installation business should be rising like
the morning sun, right?
Wrong.
While some 2,000 municipal
utilities exist across the
United States, only half a
dozen were formed in recent
years. Boulder's would be
the first established to
increase clean energy and
combat climate pollution.
A new Coca-Cola ad campaign
focuses on the mistaken
belief that beating obesity
is a matter of counting
calories. This theory has
been found to be patently
false. All calories are NOT
the same, and obesity is the
result of consuming too many
of the wrong type of
calories
EWhile many economists say
the 0.1 percent decline in
the fourth-quarter gross
domestic product (GDP) isn’t
as bad as it looks,
financial commentator Robert
Wiedemer, best-selling
author of "Aftershock," says
the number is actually worse
than it looks.
That’s
because the government only
adjusts GDP numbers by an
annual inflation rate of 0.6
percent, even though the
Consumer Price Index rose
1.7 percent last year, he
tells Newsmax TV in an
exclusive interview. And
given the slim magnitude of
GDP change, the inflation
number makes a big
difference.
The US is consuming energy
considerably more efficiently and with lower
emissions than just five years ago thanks to
a slew of modern technologies that are
changing decades-old patterns, research firm
Bloomberg New Energy Finance and industry
group the Business Council for Sustainable
Energy find in a new report.
“These new energy technologies, which
some still claim aren't ready for prime
time, are already making a major impact on
US energy”
"The real loser at the end
of the day is, it is not the
power companies, it is
ultimately consumers,
residential and business
consumers, they are going to
bear this costs," said Kevin
Hennessy, director of
government affairs for New
England for Dominion.
Numerous citizen and
environmental groups from
the Appalachian region are
bringing a lawsuit against
the U.S. Department of
Interior for its removal of
what some consider a key
protection for streams
against mountaintop removal
mining.
An EPA attempt to force
Arizona utilities to spend
up to $ 1 billion for
supposed pollution control
measures that would not
affect health or be visible
to the human eye is being
challenged in federal court
by Attorney General Tom
Horne.
The Federal Reserve on
Wednesday left in place its
monthly $85 billion
bond-buying stimulus plan,
saying economic growth had
stalled but indicating the
pullback was likely
temporary.
Describing
the nation's job market as
continuing its modest pace
of improvement, the Fed
repeated a pledge to keep
purchasing securities until
the outlook for employment
"improves substantially."
Car makers Daimler, Ford and
Nissan have announced the
signing of a three-way
agreement for the
development of a common fuel
cell stack and fuel cell
system for use in separately
branded Fuel Cell Electric
Vehicles (FCEV). With each
making an equal investment,
the companies hope to have
"the world’s first
affordable, mass-market
FCEVs" on sale by 2017.
The Golden State's new 13.3
percent income tax on top
earners prompted golfer Phil
Mickelson to say earlier
this month he was
considering a move, and
according to the accountants
who advise millionaire
athletes, he was just saying
what a lot of jocks were
already thinking. Federal
taxes on the top income
bracket just rose by roughly
5 percent, and, while
there's nothing rich
athletes can do about that,
they are paying attention to
which states dip into their
game checks — and how much
they take.
Ronald J. Mills believes what's happening
in Central Ohio will help change the course
of solid waste management history.
"A game changer," he said, one that will
help redefine the value of trash and its
disposal.
Giant bees appeared at Prime
Minister David Cameron’s
office at #10 Downing Street
this morning to sting the
government into delivering a
Bee Action Plan, as part of
Friends of the Earth’s Bee
Cause campaign.
“There is no other major
market in which respondents
have such a negative view of
fiscal policy, and are so
concerned about the level of
government spending, and
there is no doubt this is
weighing on both business
confidence and optimism
about the global recovery.”
Products include implantable
medical devices, switches
and relays, certain
fluorescent lamps, soaps and
cosmetics, and some medical
devices such as thermometers
and blood pressure devices.
Mercury-added dental
amalgams are also to be
phased out.
Advertised as "the greenest
show on grass," the golf
tournament will feature
recycling and compost bins
instead of trash cans. Water
use will be monitored and
wastewater from the event's
kitchens will be recycled
for use in portable toilets.
And all awards will have at
least one sustainable
element such as reclaimed or
recycled materials
Despite on the ongoing
financial tragedy that has
gripped Greece for the past
three years, the country has
risen Phoenix-like from the
ashes to become one of the
world's largest markets for
solar photovoltaics (solar
PV).
...independent test results
for its hydrogen technology
that dramatically reduces
pollution and green house
related gasses.
“Increasing food
requirements to feed our
current world’s growing
population and prolonged
droughts in many regions of
the world are already
increasing dependence on
groundwater for
agriculture,” says Allen.
“Climate-change-related
stresses on fresh surface
water, such as glacier-fed
rivers, will likely
exacerbate that situation.
U.S. Marines based at a
remote camp on the Hawaiian
island of Oahu tested a new
waste-to-energy system this
week that may change the
future of military waste
management...
According to deputies, the
homeowner had Stewart at
gunpoint when he told the
homeowner that he was not
going back to jail. That is
when Stewart drew a pistol
from his jacket and shot at
the homeowner. The homeowner
returned fire and shot
Stewart in the buttocks.
Now that the economy is
officially contracting, it's
a good time to look back and
list the various Obama
policies that are causing
it. We do this not in the
spirit of blame but rather
to point to the corrective
steps he needs to take to
head off a new recession.
After several quarters of
optimistic but rigged data
showing the economy growing
at a 2 percent clip, the
truth is emerging: We are on
the verge of a double dip
recession).
Hydraulically fractured
natural gas wells are
producing less wastewater
per unit of gas recovered
than conventional wells
would. But the scale of
fracking operations in the
Marcellus shale region is so
vast that the wastewater it
produces threatens to
overwhelm the region's
wastewater disposal
capacity, according to new
analysis by researchers at
Duke and Kent State
universities.
Idle No More, the
grassroots movement that
went viral after the passage
of Canada’s omnibus budget
Bill C-45 in December, is
determined to keep pressure
on the government of Prime
Minister Stephen Harper to
repeal the legislation and
to address the abysmal
living conditions and
quality-of-life issues
plaguing much of the
aboriginal population,
especially those on
reserves.
What do bacteria, wind
turbines and solar panels
have to do with one another?
Nothing ... unless you can
teach the bacteria to
“breathe” electricity and
turn it into biofuel. That’s
still a very long way off,
but a team of researchers at
the BioTechnology Institute
at the University of
Minnesota - Twin Cities have
found a method for growing
iron-oxidizing bacteria by
feeding it electricity. It’s
primarily a way to better
study a recently-discovered
type of bacteria, but it
also holds the promise of
turning electricity into
biofuel.
Israel launched a rare airstrike inside
Syria, U.S. officials said Wednesday,
targeting a convoy believed to contain
anti-aircraft weapons bound for Hezbollah
militants in Lebanon. The attack adds a
potentially flammable new element to
tensions already heightened by Syria's civil
war
People are upset. They are
witnessing an administration
that is putting our freedom
under a constant barrage of
threats and attacks. This
administration is expanding
corruption at mind boggling
rates and yet our
politicians aren't working
to reduce the amount of
corruption and government
intrusion into our lives;
they are vastly expanding
it.
A few years ago, the clean
energy industry sat at a
unique pinnacle of public
opinion. People liked its
promise to address high
energy prices. They liked it
because it would help wean
America off foreign oil.
They liked it because it
would respond to the threat
of climate change. Democrat
or Republican, West Coast
Prius driver or Midwest
farmer. Everyone liked what
clean energy was offering.
A federal judge on Tuesday
approved a $4 billion
settlement hammered out
between BP and the US
government over the 2010
Macondo disaster in the Gulf
of Mexico.
The U.S. economy is not
ready to stand on its own,
therefore the Federal
Reserve should “keep the
pedal to the medal” and
continue quantitative easing
(QE) well into 2015, Nobel
Prize winning economist Paul
Krugman tells Yahoo.
Many doubted the claims of
O2 owner, Joel Olsen, who
said a solar farm would
benefit the community. Olsen
said it would add nearly $1
million to the tax base
while producing no noise,
smell, or pollution.
Minnesota Power announced
today it will convert its
coal-fired power plant in
Hoyt Lakes to natural gas
and shut down one of three
coal units at its Taconite
Harbor plant on the North
Shore as the utility
continues a slow move away
from carbon-causing coal.
Crude oil spilling from a barge that hit
the Vicksburg Railroad bridge across the
lower Mississippi River has closed 16 miles
of the river to navigation.
Some 800 barges are backed up while the
oil spill is cleaned up, the U.S. Coast
Guard said.
The right of power companies
to condemn private property
for a transmission line is
headed for another battle at
the Montana Legislature, as
a Republican state senator
wants to repeal a
two-year-old law defining
that right.
With climate change
predicted to increase the
severity and frequency of
drought events in many part
of the world, water
conservation is a growing
concern. New water retention
technology developed at
Michigan State University
(MSU) could help quench the
thirst of parched crops
while using less water, not
only enabling crops to
better deal with drought,
but also improving crop
yields in marginal areas.
Some families could get
priced out of health
insurance due to what's
being called a glitch in
President Barack Obama's
overhaul law. IRS
regulations issued Wednesday
failed to fix the problem as
liberal backers of the
president's plan had hoped.
President Obama will promote
his plan to battle gun
violence on Monday in
Minneapolis because that
community is doing some of
the things he wants to see
nationally.
Take a moment to think about
where your electricity comes
from and what comes to mind?
Perhaps natural gas
pipelines and railcars
filled with coal -- or maybe
solar farms spread across
acres of land. Adding to
this mix is a newcomer to
the field. With advancements
in technologies, Americans
will soon be able to tap
into energy derived from the
ocean.
The potential crude reserves are scouted.
Producers are pioneering. But, will any of
the just-emerging tight crude plays
scattered across the US onshore post
significant results in 2013?
Analysts say some bets have been made,
but the industry will watch and wait.
Birds, crabs and rare trees
are expected to recover on
Palmyra Atoll, a collection
of islets located about
1,000 miles south of Hawaii,
now that roughly 30,000 rats
have been eradicated by the
U.S. Fish and Wildlife
Service and conservation
groups.
The destruction of tropical peatland
forests is causing them to haemorrhage
carbon dioxide into the atmosphere,
scientists say.
The research, published in Nature,
suggests peatland contributions to climate
change have been badly underestimated.
A leading voice on terrorism
in the Middle East called
for the United States to
suspend weapons sales to
Egypt until the Egyptian
government shows significant
progress in transitioning
the country to a democracy.
"With Soda Stream, we could
have saved 500 million
bottles on game day alone."
Long-term exposure to fine
particles of pollutants in
the air can trigger adverse
birth outcomes, childhood
respiratory diseases and
atherosclerosis, the World
Health Organization warned
today.
“While we were debating each
other 23 times, the other
side, the Obama campaign,
was spending $150 million or
whatever the number is on
technology and data all
across the country.
“So fundamentally we sort of
have to accept the fact that
we are in a permanent
political environment and
that nine-month operations
aren’t going to work
anymore, obviously.”
Every January 29, the
Northwestern Band of
Shoshone hosts a memorial in
remembrance of the estimated
300 men, women and children
of their nation who were
slain in 1863 by an
all-volunteer regiment of
roughly 200 white men from
California.
chance for C-class flares on
days one, two, and three (01
Feb, 02
Feb, 03 Feb). The
geomagnetic field is
expected to be at quiet
levels on day one (01 Feb)
increasing to quiet to
unsettled levels on day two
(02 Feb) as a coronal hole
high-speed stream (CH HSS)
becomes geoeffective.
House Republicans and
Speaker John Boehner have
hit upon a de facto solution
to the problems of governing
while seeming to keep faith
with their ideologically
driven constituents.
Since Vladimir Putin
returned to the Kremlin as
president last May, Russia
has taken a series of
anti-American steps. In
recent months, his
government has ended USAID
programs in Russia and
banned adoptions of Russian
children by American
parents.
On Wednesday January 23,
Naperville, Illinois
resident Jennifer Stahl was
arrested for verbally
refusing installation of a
smart meter on her own
property. Jennifer has been
studying the issue for quite
some time, and decided that
a smart meter could be
detrimental to her health,
security, and privacy.
The city of Naperville,
Illinois, which owns the
electrical utility, claims
otherwise. They insist the
smart meters are safe, and
have bullied homeowners into
accepting them.
This year the spring equinox
falls on March 20th, marking
the first day of spring. But
regardless of the date, it
feels like spring when the
temperature warms and we
start to see new green
leaves and flowers bloom
after a dormant winter.
According to new research,
trees in the continental
U.S. could send out new
spring leaves up to 17 days
earlier than expected in the
coming century as global
temperatures start to rise.
Researchers at Princeton
University suggest that
these climate-driven changes
could lead to composition
changes of northeastern
forests and give a boost to
their ability to take up
carbon dioxide.
Advances in solar energy
efficiencies have so far
been made with irregular
surfaces, thinner tabbing
between cells, more
optically perfect glass and
even special coatings, but
now Stanford engineers say
the best efficiency is via
ultra-thin polymer films
inside solar cells that
allow more “bounce room.”
New research shows that
workers spent more of the
payroll tax cut than
expected — even more then
they had planned to —
thereby boosting the economy
more than thought.
The flu season has been
hitting hard this winter all
across the country with
nearly 30 states reporting
flulike activity and over
2,200 people being
hospitalized according to
government health experts.
Whether or not you have
gotten your flu shot,
chances are you or someone
you know someone has come
down with flu-like systems.
So what can we attribute the
current spike in flu cases?
According to one report,
climate change is starting
to play an interesting role.
As the combined effects of
Antarctic stratospheric
ozone depletion and climate
warming have forced the
westerly surface winds in
the Southern Hemisphere to
shift toward the pole,
mixing between the upper
ocean and deeper waters has
also changed. Waugh
et al. (p.
568) now show that water
originating at the surface
at subtropical latitudes is
mixing into the deeper ocean
at a higher rate than 20
years ago, while the reverse
is true for those
originating at higher
latitudes. The summer
westerly winds that blow in
the Southern Hemisphere have
shifted toward the South
Pole over the past several
decades, but why?
Lee and Feldstein
(p. 563) show that
greenhouse gas forcing and
ozone depletion impart
different signatures to wind
patterns and conclude that
ozone depletion has been
responsible for more than
half of the observed shift.
Conspiracy Theories Swirl
Around Germany’s Gold
Repatriation
Syria: Israeli Strike Raises
Concerns of Wider Conflict
A Stable Iraq Is Not
Possible, Says Defense
Expert
Spain: Will Exodus of
Workers to Latin America
Doom the Economy?
Morocco Seeks Oil Expansion
to Offset Poverty,
Radicalism
Afghanistan: Kunar Province
Becoming ‘Mother’ Al-Qaeda
Bankrupt and Mired in
Violence, Honduras Pushes
for National Overhaul
Chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs)
seemed like a wonder of
modern chemistry: inert,
nontoxic chemicals that
could do it all, from
cooling your fridge to
spritzing your hair. But to
the surprise of chemists,
the gases seeped into the
stratosphere and destroyed
the ozone there to create
the Antarctic ozone hole.
And the hole, in turn,
stunned meteorologists when
it reached down to boost the
ring of wind encircling the
icy continent. Now it's the
oceanographers' turn to
scratch their heads. In an
ironic twist, they have used
the same CFCs that created
the ozone hole to track its
effects on the Southern
Ocean.
It takes NO courage to surrender.
Right now, there are “well-meaning”
politicians with foolish ideals
that are fighting around the clock to strip
you of your natural born rights. They
are motivated, committed, and they are
tenacious. Their goal is singular and
detrimental: De-arming law-abiding citizens.
It’s bad enough the U.S.
Navy grounded its
minesweeper, the USS
Guardian, in the
Philippines. It’s even worse
the $227 million ship will
have to be dismantled in
order to remove it from the
reef. But now,
environmentalists with the
United Nations Educational,
Scientific and Cultural
Organization want to fine
the United States for the
ship’s damage to the coral
reef, a listed World
Heritage Site.
Uranium price publishers
TradeTech and Ux Consulting
increased their weekly spot
prices for uranium to
$43.75/pound U3O8 and
$44/lb, respectively, due
primarily to purchases last
week by Deutsche Bank,
market sources said.
The country has retained its
top triple-A rating from
Moody's Investors Service
and Fitch Ratings, despite
rising debt levels. It was
downgraded by one notch in
2011 by Standard & Poor's
after a chaotic debt ceiling
battle. On Monday, Fitch
said the recent debt ceiling
extension eliminates the
immediate risk to the
rating.
The only rodenticide
producer that has refused to
adopt the U.S. EPA’s safety
standards for all of its
consumer products has lost
federal authorization to
sell its products in the
United States.
The Federal Open Market
Committee (FOMC) made no
changes to monetary policy
at it January 2013 meeting.
The Fed will continue to
purchase agency
mortgage-backed securities
(MBS) at a pace of $40
billion per month and
longer-term Treasuries at a
pace of $45 billion per
month, while also
maintaining its policy of
reinvesting principal
payments from its current
holdings into MBS and
rolling over Treasury
securities at auction. The
fed funds rate target
remains in the 0.00% to
0.25% range.
Mining deaths in the United States
reached their second-lowest total ever in
2012, the federal Mine Safety and Health
Administration announced Thursday.
Also, the industry's fatality rate,
calculated based on the number of deaths per
200,000 hours worked, was at an all-time low
for the second year in a row, the agency
said.
Freddie Mac (OTC:
FMCC) yesterday
released the results of its
Primary Mortgage
Market Survey®
(PMMS®), showing mortgage
rates continuing to trend
higher amid a growing
economy led in part by the
recovering housing market.
This marks the first week
the 30-year fixed-rate
mortgage has averaged above
3.5 percent since September
13th of last year. The
all-time record low for the
30-year fixed was set the
week of November 21, 2012,
when it averaged 3.31
percent.
The United States has named
the San Francisco Bay and
Estuary as its 35th Wetland
of International Importance
under the Ramsar Convention,
effective on World Wetlands
Day, February 2.
Environmental, legal and
nuclear experts from
California and New Mexico
are holding a community
forum Wednesday to reveal
the “potentially illegal”
new federal government plan
to ship plutonium bomb cores
across three western states.
We tend to think of reason
and emotion as being two
different things, but it
turns out that there may not
be a choice between the
heart and the head. A
University of Illinois team,
led by neuroscience
professor Aron Barbey, has
made the first detailed 3D
map of emotional and general
intelligence in the brain,
that shows a strong overlap
of general and emotional
intelligence.
A bipartisan group of US
lawmakers on Thursday
introduced a bill that would
allow liquefied natural gas
exports to North Atlantic
Treaty Organization members,
Japan and other countries.
US crude oil prices have
been moving up for nearly
two months now. There are a
number of possible
explanations for this
strength in crude, including
ongoing Mideast unrest,
expectations of higher
demand from China, and of
course the QE-driven
"risk-on" trade.
Consumer confidence dropped
in January to its lowest
level in more than a year as
Americans were more
pessimistic about the
economic outlook and their
financial prospects,
according to a private
sector report released on
Tuesday.
At the same time US equity
markets continue to march
higher. In fact the
divergence between consumer
sentiment and the stock
market has become quite
pronounced and is unlikely
to be sustainable over the
longer term. Ultimately,
weak sentiment will result
in lower sales.
For many in Indian country, President
Barack Obama said magic words, “It’s really
important for us to remember our history.
Unless you’re one of the first Americans, a
Native American, you came from someplace
else. Somebody brought you.”
Somebody brought you. Or you showed up.
Even uninvited. Yet after two centuries of
borders, two centuries of crossing a line on
a map, who’s really an immigrant in the 21st
century?